A Centralized Real-Time E-Healthcare System for Remote Detection and Prediction of Epileptic Seizures - E-Healthcare Systems and Wireless Communications - page 409

in Australia with a significant number of people
having to rely on their family members or carers
to travel. About 56% of people with Epilepsy
need someone to drive them around. These people
spend an average of $37.42 per week on transport
while taxi cost prevents 23% of the people with
Epilepsy from travelling by taxi (JECA, 2009)
The Department of Health, Western Australia
(2008) defines a comprehensive model of care
for Epilepsy patients in Australia. This model
includes essential of care, primary care, emer-
gency center and secondary care, and tertiary
care . The essential of care includes an “accurate
diagnosis, optimal investigation and treatment,
well-informed patients, co-ordinated long-term
care and counseling appropriate to individual
needs”. Primary care refers to a shared care man-
agement system which establishes the role of the
GP and other primary care staff during the course
of treatment. Emergency Centre and Secondary
Care aim at making the assessment of patients
with suspected seizures an essential part of the
emergency department at all public hospitals.
Tertiary care aims at providing “specialist-led
Epilepsy services” and “outpatient clinics” as
an essential component of “the core neurology
departmental activities” of all teaching hospitals.

computers and computer systems, personal digital
assistants (PDA), and E-healthcare applications.
E-healthcare systems have been implemented in
many developed countries for over a decade but
the concept of a real-time e-healthcare system
has just been there for a short period of time.
This is due to some important supporting factors
involving the development of the communication
infrastructures and technologies, and technologies
supporting the interoperability between computers
and mobile devices. A factor that differentiates
a real-time e-healthcare system from a regular
e-healthcare system is the real-time capability.
The real-time capability is not possible without
a strong communication infrastructure that sup-
ports mobile devices and real-time information
transmission and processing. The rapid develop-
ment of wireless sensor networks (WSN) and
pervasive computing technologies provides an
important foundation for the development and
implementation of a CREHS. These systems
typically involve a Home Healthcare End (HHE)
system, E-healthcare Service Provider (ESP) and
E-healthcare Control Center (ECC). At ECCs,
healthcare specialists receive continuous health
report on remote patients through WSNs and
broadband connections (the Internet). The goal of
a CRESH is to effective reduce healthcare costs,
improving the quality of healthcare services while
allowing patients to have access to healthcare spe-
cialists at remote healthcare centers in a low cost
and efficient manner (King, Hsu & Lin, 2007). A
CREHS allows much more information on health
status of remote patients to be collected, stored,
analyzed, and retrieved for further analysis and
researches to improve treatment quality.
Since 2008, Australia's Federal Government
has committed to developing e-health communica-
tion infrastructure that allows Australians to have
secure and convenient access to e-health records.
The release of the Australian health minister's
National E-Health Strategy in 2008 restated the
importance of developing e-health services nation-
ally. More importantly, there have been substantial

A CENTRALIZED REAL-TIME
E-HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
(CREHS) FOR REMOTE
DETECTION AND PREDICTION
OF EPILEPTIC SEIZURES

The Foundation of a
CREHS in Australia

A CREHS provides the remote patients with real-
time healthcare services from centralized loca-
tions (i.e. healthcare centers) via the support of
information and communication technology (ICT)
and necessary equipment. These typically involve
the Internet (broadband communication lines),