Wireless technology advances and challenges for telemedicine

elemedicine employs telecommunications technologies to provide medical information and services via secured communication channels. A diverse range of services can be supported by wireless telemedicine systems such as transmission and retrieval of patients’ medical data, including images, heart and respiratory rates, SpO2 levels, and other vital signs. Telemedicine systems can utilize well established and emerging wireless technologies and standards such as IEEE 802.11, 802.15, and 802.16based networks for the reliable delivery of medical information and provision of life-saving services. These systems often operate in harsh outdoor environments, especially since accidents are often caused by heavy rainfall, where the wireless communication links can be severely affected by various conditions. Under any situation, they must operate reliably at all times in order to support missioncritical services. Such a diverse range of services can only be reliably supported by having the appropriate quality assurance methodology and information security in place. As a result, advances in wireless networking technologies provide a vital link to enhancing telemedicine services. The reliability and efficiency of these systems are greatly affected by the system design and deployment phases; standardization for telemedicine systems would mean not only faster deployment, but also ease of maintenance and facilitation for future system upgrades to support emerging healthcare services. Articles in this feature topic are selected to address various aspects of wireless technologies for telemedicine, ranging from standardization activities to realization of a system. The article by Y. B. Choi et al. stresses the importance of developing various standards for telemedicine deployment and discusses future development. U. Varshney and S. Sneha discuss in their article how to enhance the coverage of patient monitoring by using wireless ad hoc networks with power management considerations. A discourse on the benefits and challenges associated with wireless telemedicine systems is then presented by D. Cypher, N. Chevrollier, N. Montavont, and N. Golmie of NIST. Security and privacy issues are unarguably important constraints in wireless telemedicine deployments. Not only must system developers, from an engineering point of view, take these seriously; healthcare service providers must also ensure the general public that all information related to individuals is securely processed without any risk of unauthorized access or alteration. The article by Y. Xiao, X. Shen, B. Sun, and L. Cai discusses security issues related to radio frequency identification (RFID) for telemedicine applications. The article by C. Poon, S-D. Bao, and Y. T. Zhang introduces a novel biometrics approach to secure wireless body sensor networks for telemedicine and m-health, which provide comprehensive and flexible patient monitoring services. The remaining articles present a couple of interesting telemedicine applications. The article by D. Bottazzi, Antonio Corradi, and Rebecca Montanari talks about providing emergency assistance to senior citizens using context-aware middleware. Finally, the article by S. A. Garawi, R. S. H. Istepanian, and M. A. Abu-Rgheff illustrates a case study of the OTELO system, which was constructed with funding from the European Union, demonstrating that clinically acceptable quality ultrasound data can be successfully transmitted by the OTELO system over a commercial third-generation network. We trust this IEEE Communications Magazine Special Issue will give readers a comprehensive discussion on various technological challenges associated with telemedicine system deployment, and how a wide range of healthcare services can be supported by both existing and future systems. Due to space limitations, only a fraction of the submitted papers could be included in this issue. We hope other topics on wireless telemedicine systems will be covered in future issues of IEEE Communications Magazine, as laboratory work is being prototyped for eventual commercial realization. We are grateful to the authors who have invested tremendous effort in presenting important insights into the technological challenges of providing healthcare services with wireless telemedicine systems. In particular, we thank the reviewers for their helpful comments which have contributed greatly to the overall quality of this feature topic. We would also like to acknowledge the assistance provided by the Editor-in-Chief and the publications staff. GUEST EDITORIAL