A PACKET-BASED TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM FOR COMMUNICATING INFORMATION BETWEEN CENTRAL MONITORING STATIONS AND REMOTE PATIENT MONITORING STATIONS

摘要

The present invention provides a packet-based telemedicine system (18) for communicating video, voice and medical data between a central monitoring station (11) and a patient monitoring station (19) which is remotely-located with respect to the central monitoring station (11). The patient monitoring station (18) obtains digital video, voice and medical measurement data from a patient and encapsulates the data in packets and sends the packets over a network (16) to the central monitoring station (11). Since the information is encapsulated in packets, the information can be sent (52, 56) over multiple types or combinations of network architectures (16), including a Community access Television (CATV) network, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), the Internet, a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), over a wireless communications network, or over an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network. Thus, a separate transmission protocol is not required for each different type of transmission media. Rather, a single transport/network layer protocol is used for encapsulating (51) the information in packets at the sending end and for de-encapsulating (35) the information at the receiving end. Furthermore, by sending the information in packets (52, 56), the video, voice and measurement data can be integrated and sent over a single network (16).