SAA, 1st version - Net!Works

eMobility – Strategic Applications AgendaHealth and Inclusionpatients. The network has been launched at the Taipei Medical University Hospital, Tri-Service General Hospitaland Taipei City-Wan Fang Hospital. The "Mobile Healthcare Services" project is part of the M-Taiwan initiativesupported by Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MoEA). The Taiwanese government has emphasized theimportance of mobile access throughout the country, placing Taiwan at the forefront of mobile broadbanddevelopment.Australian Grand-prix demonstrationIn Australia, with the help of Intel Australia and Airspan Networks, the organizers of the Australian Grand Prixdeployed a WiMAX network to improve communication flow between the on-site trauma unit and medicalspecialists at the Alfred Hospital three kilometres away [58]. Auto racing events require a medical team capableof attending the steady stream of injuries incurred by the drivers, mechanics and other personnel throughout thecompetition. The trackside trauma facility was provided with a high-speed wireless connection, linking the on-sitemedical staff with their counterparts at the Alfred Hospital three kilometres away. The WiMAX network eliminatedthe need for the 20-minute trips previously required to manually transport radiology images, test results andother medical information. Wireless web cameras installed at the remote site allowed medical staff in the field torun real-time video consultations and patient reviews with their colleagues in the hospital. The main challengesincluded the definition of a secure, dependable and yet cost-effective solution that would only take two to threedays to deploy for the temporary Emergency Medical Centre for the Grand Prix. For the Wireless ICU, the keychallenge was testing and trialling a large range of communication devices and medical equipment such asventilators and other life support machines to ensure that there was no interference from the wireless systemsdeployed.Table II.2 reports a summary of WiMAX based demonstration projects for hospital consultation and emergencyapplications.Table II.2 – Summary of WiMAX based telemedicine demonstration projects (extracted from [42]).Other relevant projects (see Annex A for further details) are listed as follows.OTELO – mObile Tele-Echography using an ultra-Light rObotOTELO (mObile- Tele-Echography using an ultra-Light rObot) is a European IST project that developed a fullyintegrated end-to-end mobile tele-echography system for population groups that are not served locally, eithertemporarily or permanently, by medical ultrasound experts. It comprised a fully portable teleoperated robotallowing a specialist sonographer to perform a real-time robotized tele-echography to remote patients [46].OTELO is a remotely controlled system designed to achieve reliable ultrasound imaging at an isolated site, distantfrom a specialist clinician. This Tele-echography system is composed of the following:An ―expert‖ site where the medical expert interacts with a dedicated patented pseudo-haptic fictiveprobe instrumented to control the positioning of the remote robot and emulates an ultrasound probethat medical experts are used to handle, thus providing a better ergonomy;The communication media;A ―patient‖ site made up of the 6 degrees of freedom (Dof) light weight robotic system and its controlunit.Further details on this system are described in [46] [1].11