GPS and GPRS Based Telemonitoring System for Emergency Patient Transportation

Applications of Space Technologies to Global Health: Scoping Review

BACKGROUND

Space technology has an impact on many domains of activity on earth, including in the field of global health. With the recent adoption of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals that highlight the need for strengthening partnerships in different domains, it is useful to better characterize the relationship between space technology and global health.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to identify the applications of space technologies to global health, the key stakeholders in the field, as well as gaps and challenges.

METHODS

We used a scoping review methodology, including a literature review and the involvement of stakeholders, via a brief self-administered, open-response questionnaire. A distinct search on several search engines was conducted for each of the four key technological domains that were previously identified by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs' Expert Group on Space and Global Health (Domain A: remote sensing; Domain B: global navigation satellite systems; Domain C: satellite communication; and Domain D: human space flight). Themes in which space technologies are of benefit to global health were extracted. Key stakeholders, as well as gaps, challenges, and perspectives were identified.

RESULTS

A total of 222 sources were included for Domain A, 82 sources for Domain B, 144 sources for Domain C, and 31 sources for Domain D. A total of 3 questionnaires out of 16 sent were answered. Global navigation satellite systems and geographic information systems are used for the study and forecasting of communicable and noncommunicable diseases; satellite communication and global navigation satellite systems for disaster response; satellite communication for telemedicine and tele-education; and global navigation satellite systems for autonomy improvement, access to health care, as well as for safe and efficient transportation. Various health research and technologies developed for inhabited space flights have been adapted for terrestrial use.

CONCLUSIONS

Although numerous examples of space technology applications to global health exist, improved awareness, training, and collaboration of the research community is needed.

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.