What is WPAN

This work describes the work-in-progress aimed at the design of a telemedicine system that is intended to give support to the physicians in critical scenarios and keep a record of the patient status within all the evacuation chain. The authors call this system a Patient Tracking System (PTS). The hardware/software platform described will integrate the services and functionalities available from the existing e-health infrastructure and provide the physicians with a decision support system in remote and hard-to-reach areas. The main goal is building a simple network hierarchy relying on two kinds of mobile devices: 1) a low-power Medical Information Carrier (MIC), and 2) an MDA (Medical Digital Assistant). A MIC is a device intended to hold personal medical information that may be accessed by a physician through a specialized terminal (the MDA) and, when suitably programmed, may emit a beacon signal to allow patient tracking along the evacuation chain. It is anticipated that our design will contribute to improve the efficiency in the use of communication resources in telemedicine. In a more general way, this project should enhance our understanding of the limitations that hardware and software impose on the operation in critical scenarios.