Decision Support Telemedicine Systems: A Conceptual Model and Reusable Templates

Scalable Architecture for Telemonitoring Chronic Diseases in Order to Support the CDSSs in a Common Platform

Introduction:

In recent years, a variety of clinical decision-support systems (CDSS) have been developed to monitor the health of patients with chronic disease from far away. These systems are effective in overcoming human resource limitation and analyzing information generated by Tele-monitoring systems. These systems, however, are limited to monitoring a particular disease, which allows them to be used only in one specific disease. In reuses of these systems to monitor other diseases, we need to re-establish a new system with a new knowledge base. However, this type of healthcare system faces many challenges, including low scalability for change, so that, if we want to modify a health monitoring system designed for a specific disease to be used for another disease, these changes will be very substantial, meaning that, most components of that system should be changed. The lack of scalability in these systems has led to the creation of multiple health monitoring systems, while many of these systems share a common structure.

Aim:

In this paper, to solve the scalability problem, architecture has been presented that allows a set of CDSSs to be placed on a common platform for Tele-monitoring.

Material and methods:

In order to provide the proposed architecture in this study, we extracted the related concepts from the literature. The anatomical concepts used in these studies are as follow: users, transmitted data, patient data storage databases, data transfer network, and medical setting and the work is done in this setting. Finally, to design the proposed architecture, UML has been used.

Results:

The innovation of this research is to provide a scalable and flexible architecture, which as a platform, is able to monitor multiple diseases with a common infrastructure. In this architecture, all components are commonly used simultaneously without the interference of several CDSSs.

Conclusion:

Utilizing the proposed model in this paper, while reducing the setup costs and speeding up the launch of various remote monitoring systems, many rework in the implementation of these systems is also reduced.

Implementation of Telecytology in Georgia for Quality Assurance Programs

The field of eHealth is rapidly evolving. The new models and protocols of application of info-communication technologies for healthcare purposes are developed. Despite of obvious advantages and benefits practical application of eHealth and its possibilities in everyday practice is slow. Much progress has been made around the world in the field of digital imaging and virtual slides. But in Georgia telecytology is still in evolving stages. It revolves around static telecytology. It has been revealed, that the application of easy available and adaptable technology together with the improvement of the infrastructure conditions is the essential basis for telecytology. This is a very useful and applicable tool for consulting on difficult cases and implementation of quality assurance programs in the field of cytology. Telecytology has significantly increased knowledge exchange and thereby ensured a better medical service. The chapter aimed description of practical application of telecytology under conditions of Georgia as well as presentation of telecytology usage for implementation of quality assurance programs in the field of cytology.

The Cloud Computing as the Tool for Implementation of Virtual Organization Technology for eHealth

Information and communication technologies have become the essential part of societal life and practical activity. eHealth can be designated as a special form of information and communication technologies. It is obvious that eHealth has a great potentiality; however today there are unfortunately only a few examples of its large services. Efficient, effective, and reliable systems for remote consultations and distance education are the top requirements for eHealth. Cloud computing has emerged as an important new field, distinguished from conventional distributed computing by its focus on large-scale sharing, innovative applications, and, in some cases, high-performance orientation. The authors define Cloud computing as flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions, and resources – what can be described as “virtual organizations.” It is plausible that this technology has more potential and can improve health care services, benefit health care research, and change the face of health information technology. However, cloud computing should be rigorously evaluated before its widespread adoption. Over the past five years, research and development activities have produced protocols, services, and tools. The present article discusses the application of virtual organization technology for eHealth purposes.