%0 Journal Article
%T GPS and GPRS Based Telemonitoring System for Emergency Patient Transportation
%A K. Satyanarayana
%A A. D. Sarma
%A J. Sravan
%A M. Malini
%A G. Venkateswarlu
%J Journal of Medical Engineering
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/363508
%X Telemonitoring during the golden hour of patient transportation helps to improve medical care. Presently there are different physiological data acquisition and transmission systems using cellular network and radio communication links. Location monitoring systems and video transmission systems are also commercially available. The emergency patient transportation systems uniquely require transmission of data pertaining to the patient, vehicle, time of the call, physiological signals (like ECG, blood pressure, a body temperature, and blood oxygen saturation), location information, a snap shot of the patient, and voice. These requirements are presently met by using separate communication systems for voice, physiological data, and location that result in a lot of inconvenience to the technicians, maintenance related issues, in addition to being expensive. This paper presents design, development, and implementation of such a telemonitoring system for emergency patient transportation employing ARM 9 processor module. This system is found to be very useful for the emergency patient transportation being undertaken by organizations like the Emergency Management Research Institute (EMRI). 1. Introduction Immediate medical attention to critically ill patients and accident victims followed by transportation to a well-equipped medical facility within the golden hour saves many lives. Numbers of road accidents in India are the highest across the world. According to the National Transportation Planning and Research Center (NTPRC) the number of road accidents for 1000 vehicles in India is about 35 while the figure is between 4 to 10 in developed countries. About 1,05,000 accidents take place every year [1]. There are several governmental and nongovernmental agencies like the Emergency Management Research Institute (EMRI), located across the country, which have been dedicated to the cause of transporting critically ill patients and accident victims. About 2,87,000 lives have been saved by EMRI in the past six years. The ambulances are specially designed to carry emergency drugs and instruments. Inner area of ambulance is fabricated in such a way that it houses emergency medicines, sterilizer, stretcher, and so forth. A typical inside layout of an ambulance employed for emergency patient transportation is shown in Figure 1. The paramedics that accompany the ambulances are specially trained to be emergency technicians. There exists a need to augment the skill set of such paramedics with the expert doctor¡¯s advice from the central monitoring station (CMS). CMS helps in
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jme/2013/363508/