WISTA: a wireless transmission system for disaster patient care

In this paper, we introduce a low-cost and easily setup wireless multimedia transmission system that can assist patient care during disasters. With real-time transfer of data from video cameras, sensors and display of information on the devices (PDAs, laptops) of EMT (Emergency Medical Team) from multiple disaster sites to the control center, the system enables disaster managers to quickly obtain patients' status information from the entire disaster area, to assist the diagnosis and treatment of patients, reducing mortality and morbidity in disaster situation. Moreover, the disaster managers in the command center can remotely control the information sent from the disaster sites. We have implemented the system prototype over the wireless network and successfully demonstrated simultaneous transmission of video, sensor information, medical image and text patient information from multiple disaster sites to the control center. The experiments conducted on the system prototype validate our system design