Telehealthcare Computing and Engineering: Principles and Design PDF

Preface

Healthcare has become a top priority in many countries. One of the most effi cient ways to reduce healthcare cost is to reduce in-person or in-hospital medical visits through the tele-healthcare systems. Tele-healthcare for remote patient monitoring and diagnosis would largely benefi t our society (1) by enhancing accessibility to care for underserved populations (such as in rural/remote areas), (2) by containing cost infl ation as a result of providing appropriate care to patients in their homes, and (3) by improving quality as a result of providing coordinated and continuous care for patients and highly effective tools for decision support. Especially, tele-healthcare system plays an important role when we face deadly viruses today. For example, in 2009 the Swinefl u virus has spread from Mexico to over 40 countries. Without good control, its threat could be as threatening as the epidemic fl u that occurred in Spain in 1919, killing millions of people.

Although Tele-healthcare Computing and Engineering (TCE) is such an important fi eld, unfortunately there are very few books covering the following three important components in TCE (see the following fi gure): (1) Healthcare principles: the medical principles need to be known fi rst before a practical medical engineering designbegins. For instance, how do we know a heart-beat signal pattern is abnormal? (2) Computer Networking: how does a wireless network remotely transmit the sensed medical data back to a hospital? (3) Embedded System: how do we design tiny medical sensors (with hardware/software) to collect medical data?

This book has a comprehensive coverage on TCE principles and application. It is based on the latest research outcomes from the top TCE experts in the world. It has both basic, tutorial-oriented description of TCE system architecture and detailed computing science/engineering design on TCE hardware and software. It has over 100 fi gures/tables to provide graphic interpretations of some profound concepts. Moreover, each chapter has a complete discussion on problem background, state-of-the-art, suggested solutions and future development trends in this topic.