Abstract
This chapter is a summary of the book and attempts to evaluate the social impact of the general idea of ubiquitous cardiology. The project discussed in the book is in fact oriented toward designing wireless bidirectional cooperation of two programmable ECG interpreting devices used for permanent heart monitoring and semi-automatic medical diagnosis. As shown above, the main idea of the project under consideration is to replace the traditional patient-doctor interaction model with a semi-automatic system, which was invented, designed, and developed by the staff of the Biocybernetic Laboratory at AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland. The system under consideration offers ubiquitous surveillance without time and distance constraints. In this book we presented and discussed the technological aspects of the ubiquitous cardiology system. Conversely, this chapter is about its social aspects. This is also an important issue because every human-dedicated system must take into account human preferences and human limitations. The ubiquitous cardiology system will be used by patients and accepted by doctors when and only when its properties and parameters will be properly related to patient expectations and doctors demands. These aspects of the project are discussed in this chapter.
TopUbiquitous Cardiology From The Doctor’S Point Of View
For many old-fashion doctors, it is strange thinking that some electronic device can really replace the direct monitoring of a patient’s heart. Fortunately, in hospitals, electronic and computer devices are becoming a part of intensive care systems, therefore the increase of confidence in electronics and informatics also concerns the exclusive society of cardiologists. Nevertheless, there is a big difference between trusting in a hospital monitoring system, which can be supported at any time by the alarm nurse or the doctor on duty, and the confidence in fully automatic elements of the ubiquitous cardiology system. In many cases the patient electronic device (PED) is expected to help the patient autonomously or by means of tele-informatic consultation with another electronic device (SuSe—the main computer in the Central Station). Such revolutionary changes in the role of electronic devices can be hard to understand and even harder to accept for many cardiologists. Therefore, the development and practical implementation of the ubiquitous cardiology system must be preceded by a great deal of scientific research with full clinical monitoring of the results and with precise statistical analysis of all the conclusions. This kind of research and testing was performed by the authors before writing this book, and the selected results can be found in all the previous chapters. Nevertheless, the general properties and the usability of the ubiquitous cardiology system still require more research.