Generic data modelling and use of XML standard for home telemonitoring of chronically ill patients

In recent years, internet-based home telemonitoring systems that allow transmission of patient data to a central database and offer immediate access to the data by the care providers have become available. The adoption of Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) as a W3C standard has generated a lot of interest in the potential value of this language in health informatics. However the telemonitoring systems often work with only one or a few types of medical devices and thus are limited in the types of diseases they can monitor. This is because different medical devices produce different types of data and the existing telemonitoring systems are generally built around a proprietary data schema specific for the device used. In this paper, we describe a generic data schema for a telemonitoring system that is applicable to different types of medical devices and different diseases, and then we present an architecture for the exchange of clinical information as data, signals of telemonitoring and clinical reports in the XML standard, up-to-date information in each electronic patient record and integration in real time with the information collected during the telemonitoring activities in the XML schema, between all the structures involved in the health care process of the patient.