Abstract
New wireless communication technology standards are being released every
year. Wireless technologies merely differ from one another by their range and
speed and can each be selected according to the type of application in use.
Mobility and ubiquity are the main benefits that can be extracted by using
those technologies. On the other hand, telemedicine is the use of
communication technologies to provide medical care and thus avoid the usual
face-to-face, physician-to-patient scenario. With telemedicine, a physician can
treat a patient located at a remote site.
Early telemedicine systems used technologies that were available at the time,
such as the telephone. Integrating wireless technologies into telemedicine
systems would surely provide a huge boost to the improvement of the delivery
of healthcare. However, telemedicine and wireless technologies are both
emerging scientific concepts. Scientific concepts always have to face
challenges prior to popularisation. The more important barriers to the adoption
of wireless telemedicine are security and privacy. Medical practitioners are
doing their best to preserve the privacy of their patients. Disclosure of
patients’ health information may lead to severe legal sanctions. Security flaws
in a wireless telemedicine system would lead to privacy breaches. Patient
privacy, which physicians have tried so hard to protect, would consequently
be out of their control.
This dissertation will achieve two goals. The first goal is to show how different
wireless technologies could be integrated into telemedicine to provide different
applications. The second goal is to design a fully wireless telemedicine
system where the information of patients will flow securely.
The model described in this dissertation shows a possible wireless
telemedicine scenario using different types of wireless technologies. The
model also proposes a solution to allow the secure flow of medical information
in order to protect the privacy of patients.
Dr. E. Marais