Remote Electrocardiogram Monitoring Based on the Internet

Abstract

Telemedicine is producing a great impact in the monitoring of patients located in remote nonclinical environments such as homes, military bases, ships, and the like. A number of applications, ranging from data collection, to chronic patient surveillance, and even to the control of therapeutic procedures, are being implemented in many parts of the world. As part of this growing trend, in this paper, we present a real-time remote patient monitoring service through World Wide Web (WWW), which allows physicians to monitor their patient in remote sites using popular Web browser. A prototype system is composed of data acquisition and preprocessing module connected to the computer as the remote site via its RS-232 port, two personal computers equipped with network and analog to digital cards, and software modules to handle communication protocols between data acquisition module and personal computer. The purpose of the system is the provision of extended monitoring for patients under drug therapy after infarction, data collection in some particular cases, remote consultation, and low-cost ECG monitoring for the elderly.

Keywords: -ECG monitoring, home monitoring, Internet, telemedicine.

Corresponding author: E-mail: [email protected]