Advanced Video Distribution for Wireless E-Healthcare Systems - E-Healthcare Systems and Wireless Communications - page 352

travelling either for them or for medical
staff that has to serve their needs.
◦

of the cases could be either wired or wire-
less, but nevertheless in this research we
focus on the wireless transmission of infor-
mation for being the most up-to-date, con-
venient, and in many situations - the only
method to transmit crucial medical data. A
healthcare system based on wireless tech-
nologies could bring significant benefits
such as:
◦

Another important e-Health applica-
tion is serving hard-to-reach regions,
or distant and rural places and hospi-
tals, which have no the needed spe-
cialist at their disposal.

◦ Patient's data could be also trans-

mitted from a laboratory (Medical
Diagnostic Laboratory, Microbiology
Laboratory, X-ray Laboratory,
etc.) to a specific doctor or medical
institution.

Improving the overall health condi-
tion of the community,

◦ Improving the healthcare efficiency,

◦ Enhancing healthcare access by seam-

less medical information exchange, • Transmission of emergency informa-

tion: Transmission of emergency infor-
mation includes cases when an ambulance
or a doctor outside a hospital is sending
crucial information about the condition of
a patient to the Emergency Centre. This
operation enables staff in the Emergency
Centres to act as fast and accurately as pos-
sible, when the patient reaches the hospital.
Some emergency cases include situations
when the emergency signal comes from a
patient registered in an organisation in the
help of elderly, diseased or disabled peo-
ple. A number of these healthcare centres
use special systems, based on sensor net-
works (wearable or implemented at the pa-
tient's home) to look after their patients. If
a system encounters a problem, it sends an
emergency signal to the Care Organisation
where the patient is registered in, or to an-
other organisation if needed.

◦ And facilitating meaningful and

transparent partnership between pa-
tients and healthcare providers by
giving ubiquitous healthcare access.

The increasing demand for healthcare infor-
mation systems and various needs of connection
between healthcare professionals has been a
trigger for the technological development within
the area of e-Health services. One of the main
advantages of these services for the patients ac-
cording to 'eHealth News EU' (Engle, 2009), is
the ability to keep people where they want to be,
for instance at home with their family. These sys-
tems allow patients to monitor daily their health
conditions and enable more accurate prescription
of medications. Daily health monitoring also gives
patients valuable reassurance, knowing that they
always can keep a contact with a doctor by send-
ing 'data' and receiving 'acknowledgement'; and
hence reducing the number of hospital admissions
which saves time of the healthcare professionals
(Bashshur & Shanon, 2009; Reuters, 2009). Such
systems are called mobile healthcare (m-Health)
IT. M-Health typically refers to moving portable
devices with the capability to create, store, retrieve,
and transmit data in real time between end users
for the purpose of improving patient's safety and
quality of care (www.ehealth-connection.org,
2010). M-Health in recent years became one of the

• Experience exchange between doctors at

different places: By providing communi-
cation and experience exchange between
professionals in distant hospitals, time of
diagnosis could be significantly decreased
by getting quick choice about a resolv-
ing problem. This could be done by direct
voice and video streaming or information
exchanges between databases of medical
institutions. The data transmission in some