Mobile telemedicine system for home care and patient monitoring

Home care services are growing up in the past years. Contemplating the patient/family pair, it represents a solution to the medical problems of the modern life. With the social trends, the senior population has been increasing in the last years. However, as living is more stressful than ever, there are more cases of chronic diseases. The difficulties of transport in the big cities and the scarcity of hospital streambeds turn the home care an attractive solution. However, its routines can be switched by telemedicine. This paper describes the implementation of a telemedicine system for patient monitoring using mobile telephony. The major aspect about this application is its generality, which allows the use of any patient monitor with a RS-232 interface. The system proved to be quick and reliable. Therefore, it represents an applicable solution to telehomecare.