ALLPCB
1. Introduction
Applying advanced technologies to deliver timely and comprehensive medical services supports efficient patient care. Rapid progress in wireless communications and image compression, together with improved security and surveillance technologies, creates conditions for new medical diagnostic and care systems. In remote medicine and monitoring applications, these technologies enable systems for remote consultation, on-site remote monitoring, remote surgical guidance, localized intensive care, postoperative care, emergency care, and off-site nursing monitoring, complementing existing monitoring methods.
WLAN (wireless local area network) technologies make it feasible to build wireless-based diagnostic and care systems within a defined area. The WiFi IEEE 802.11 family supports wireless transmission of medical images and data; in particular, 802.11n helps enable wireless delivery of high-definition images. When combined with interconnection protocols such as DLNA, IGRS, and UPnP, various medical digital terminals, especially mobile devices, can perform wireless discovery, connection, and interoperability.
This article uses WLAN wireless technology as a foundation to propose an application model and solutions for future medical diagnostic and care monitoring systems. It analyzes the potential to replace traditional analog CCTV and digital DVR systems and describes a new diagnostic and care monitoring architecture.
2. System Design and Implementation
With rising living standards, demand for health monitoring and treatment quality has increased. Hospital outpatient and inpatient building security monitoring, 24-hour patient monitoring in wards and ICUs, surgical observation and training, and joint consultations all rely on medical monitoring equipment. Critical areas such as intensive care units and operating rooms require continuous, real-time monitoring. Hospitals need to monitor wards and operating rooms comprehensively to improve diagnostic efficiency, standardize management, enhance patient care, and preserve recordings that help resolve disputes and assign responsibility.
Most current hospital monitoring systems consist of ward call phones, fixed video devices, and alarm buttons. These fixed installations provide point-based monitoring but have limitations compared with mobile, randomly placed systems: 1) temporary beds cannot receive ad hoc monitoring; 2) adding monitoring points cannot easily reuse existing devices; 3) retrofitting wiring during hospital IT upgrades disrupts operations; 4) wiring increases material and maintenance costs. Wireless technologies can avoid these issues and improve hospital management and environment.
2.1 Overall Architecture of the Next-Generation Medical Monitoring System
Medical video monitoring is an important component of hospital information systems. Collected data are valuable for medical decision-making and services. Video recordings preserve the greatest amount of patient information. From simple calls to real-time video transmission, surgical monitoring, remote consultation, wearable monitoring, and SMS-based alerts, these elements form a three-dimensional medical monitoring information network.
2.2 Wireless Medical Video Monitoring System Details
The following describes an architecture based on WiFi 802.11 for wireless medical video monitoring.
By deploying a broadband wireless LAN using 802.11 as the wireless link and supporting interconnect protocols such as DLNA, IGRS, and UPnP, wireless-broadband-enabled video monitoring devices can be used to place wireless cameras at designated monitoring points in wards. Cameras transmit images via wireless routers to nurse station displays so clinicians can observe patients during intercom sessions and perform real-time monitoring. A configured wireless secure storage system (WSS) can automatically receive and store wirelessly transmitted images, allowing on-duty and attending physicians to review patients remotely and retrieve real-time or historical images via the Internet. The system can add multiple wireless monitoring points on demand. Devices include LAN interfaces so they can also connect via wired networks, enabling hybrid solutions and integration with hospital information management systems, mobile communications, and the Internet.
802.11n can reach distances up to about 200 meters, which meets typical hospital and inpatient building requirements. Real-world 802.11n throughput can exceed 108 Mbps, approximately 13.5 MB/s, sufficient for HD video. A standard 100 Mbps wired Ethernet provides roughly 10 MB/s and can also support HD. Therefore, wireless medical video monitoring systems can be technically advantageous compared with wired LAN-based systems.
The system's main elements are wireless cameras (monitoring endpoints), wireless monitoring displays (WLCD), wireless secure storage arrays (WSS), and wireless hubs (WSwitch). These enable easy deployment and dynamic configuration, allowing video collection wherever needed, including individual deployment in inpatient departments or emergency rooms. Within a range of about 100 meters, wireless routers enable cameras to stream video to the network in real time.
(1) Monitoring Center
The monitoring center can use wireless-capable LCD walls or PCs as monitoring hosts. Through browsers or management software, comprehensive medical video monitoring is performed. Hospital and departmental physicians can monitor scenarios from the monitoring center or their offices using displays, computers, or handheld wireless video terminals. A wireless secure storage array (WSS) receives, records, and stores monitoring images. A single WSS can synchronously store 80 audio/video streams. Recording can follow scheduled time plans. A single wireless hub ME3400 supports up to 256 devices, and a single WSS can connect to 32 devices; in practice, an ME3400 can support about 50 devices and up to three WSS units.
WSS features:
1. Open standards support
Supports wireless 802.11b/g/n WiFi, TCP/IP, and file-sharing protocols such as NFS, CIFS, and SMB for Windows and Unix interoperability.
2. Large capacity and flexible expansion
WSS supports 2 to 5 hard drives, with a maximum capacity of 5 TB. Users can expand capacity flexibly. It offers plug-and-play deployment. The system can be configured with a dual-node fault-tolerant architecture; when capacity limits are reached, adding another WSS to the network immediately increases storage without shutting down front-end servers. Front-end processing capacity can also be increased by adding additional front-end hosts.
3. Stability and security
Developed on ARM and Linux platforms with embedded systems firmware in flash, hardware data encryption, RAID, automatic backup, and antivirus measures, the WSS is designed to ensure system stability and data security.
(2) Monitoring Sites
The camera subsystem is the source of the system signal, and its quality determines overall monitoring effectiveness. The GW S200 wireless camera handles image capture, compression, and transmission. The number and placement of GW S200 cameras in wards, operating rooms, and treatment rooms depend on specific needs. Current wireless cameras implement the H.264 codec and 802.11n wireless transmission. H.264 ensures high image quality, while 802.11n enables fast transfer of large high-definition images over the network.
3. Conclusion
To meet future medical demands for high-quality video and flexible configurations, this article proposes a next-generation wireless medical monitoring architecture that integrates advanced wireless video capture, secure wireless storage, streaming technology, Internet technologies, and mobile networks. The proposed design and solutions enable flexible modes for transmitting and storing images in medical video monitoring and provide a practical foundation for clinical deployment of next-generation wireless medical monitoring systems.
