Challenges and Future Trends in Tele-Health services - ECG Acquisition and Automated Remote Processing - page 127

Legends:

Full function device
Reduced Function Device
a : Network coordinator

a

a

Fig. 6.2 Zigbee network topologies

In the receiving side, Zigbee module delivers the data to the PC through USB. In
the host computer, a real-time ECG plot and heart rate measure is provided at the
front end. A similar system is reported in [ 13 ] where the authors used
MSP430FG439 processor coupled with MG2455TAI Zigbee module. In [ 14 ], a
wireless BP-monitoring system of patients during hemodialysis process is
described. The patient end module used TIMSP430F169 microcontroller with
XBee 2.4 GHz Zigbee module. The remote end computer generates alarm mes-
sages when the BP exceeds normal range. The efficiency of a Zigbee-based
ubiquitous healthcare service using mobile phone for elderly patients is investi-
gated in [ 15 ]. In this study, blood glucometer and ECG were studied with mobile
phone and wireless transmitter, respectively, both enabled with Zigbee protocol.
Some recent works on remote health-monitoring applications are given [ 16 - 21 ].
For developing nations, the Zigbee technology can be effective at hospitals for in-
house patient monitoring. The only requirement is the proper infrastructure and
connectivity with the specialist doctors for clinical advice. Although a lot of research
has been done with prototype systems, the patient-monitoring modules, available
only from limited vendors in developed nations, are too costly for general usage.

6.4 Requirements for Remote Healthcare Setup

From the discussions in Sect. 1.7 and in the present chapter, development of tele-
healthcare in the developing nation requires addressing of some specific issues
given below:
Development of nationwide communication infrastructure is the first and
foremost criteria. In Indian scenario, the tier-1 cities and most of the districts are
well covered by government and/or private service providers' network. However,
the remote villages, specially in hill regions, the connectivity and maintenance is
still inadequate.
Lack of medical professionals and specialists is a burning issue for most
developing nations. To engage or utilize the available specialists for remote health
services, they can be provided with gadgets with software for medical data