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Telecardiology is one of the emerging fields of telemedicine to improve the cardiac patient's life quality. It uses the information and communication technologies to monitor the cardiac patients by healthcare professionals at distant. The telecardiology system demands for ubiquitous connection to assure promising services. Such a seamless service is provided by heterogeneous wireless technology. But the open network infrastructure of the heterogeneous networks is prone to various security attacks which makes patient privacy susceptible. Therefore, in this paper, the telecardiology system incorporated with Trust and Privacy based Multi-attribute Vertical Handoff decision algorithm towards decide on an best possible association amongst the available alternative candidates based on the patient health condition. Simulation results show enhancement in provisions of handoff rate, reduced blocking probability and improved performance throughput. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heart murmur evaluation is the most common cause of referral to cardiology, and auscultation of heart sounds with a stethoscope remains a key component of the initial cardiovascular exam. Adoption of telecardiology has been limited by challenges in teleauscultation. We set out to compare in-person auscultatory findings with heart sounds recorded by the Core stethoscope (Eko, Berkeley, CA) in patients with normal heart sounds, innocent heart murmurs, and a variety of pathologic findings. Our study demonstrates that Eko recordings had a high percent of agreement with in-person auscultation findings and echocardiogram findings, with moderate inter-rater reliability. It was useful in identifying patients with pathologic murmurs who would benefit from further assessment. It was able to discern major types of pathological murmurs. Certain qualitative differences in the recorded sounds as compared to in-person auscultation were identified by the reading cardiologists. They were able to acclimate to these subtle differences. The system was felt to be easy to use, and most cardiologists in the study would consider using it in clinical settings. The Eko Core system may be a useful screening tool for murmur evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays telecardiology is widely popular due to the fact that an increasing number of people are suffering from cardiac disease in the world. Therefore huge amount of ECG signal as well as patient confidential information will be transmitted via the Internet. Ibaida's wavelet-based data hiding technique aims to protect patient confidential data utilizing ECG signal as a host media. But it cannot completely reconstruct the original ECG signal. Any alteration of the ECG may lead to an inaccurate diagnosis conclusion drawn by the doctor, which cannot be accepted by patients. In this paper, our elemental standpoint requires that both patient information and ECG signal must be perfectly restored at the extraction side. Firstly a method is proposed to embed patient confidential data into ECG signal, while keeping its high visual quality. Then we use a unified embedding-scrambling method to guarantee the security of patient privacy as well as the ECG signal itself. The structure of watermarked ECG signal is severely deconstructed. Both of the experimental results demonstrate that our proposed methods are reversible. Moreover the latter scheme can achieve high information payload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developed countries heart failure is one of the most important causes of death, followed closely by strokes and other cerebrovascular diseases. It is one of the major healthcare issues in terms of increasing number of patients, rate of hospitalizations and costs. The main aim of this paper is to present telemedicine applications for monitoring and follow-up of heart failure and to show how these systems can help reduce costs of administering heart failure. The search for e-health applications and systems in the field of telemonitoring of heart failure was pursued in IEEE Xplore, Science Direct, PubMed and Scopus systems between 2005 and the present time. This search was conducted between May and June 2015, and the articles deemed to be of most interest about treatment, prevention, self-empowerment and stabilization of patients were selected. Over 100 articles about telemonitoring of heart failure have been found in the literature reviewed since 2005, although the most interesting ones have been selected from the scientific standpoint. Many of them show that telemonitoring of patients with a high risk of heart failure is a measure that might help to reduce the risk of suffering from the disease. Following the review conducted, in can be stated that via the research articles analysed that telemonitoring systems can help to reduce the costs of administering heart failure and result in less re-hospitalization of patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the design and implementation of a system for digital telecardiology on mobile devices called Remote Cardio Consultation (RCC). Using RCC may improve first intervention procedures in case of heart attack. In fact, it allows physicians to remotely consult ECG signals from a mobile device or smartphone by using a so-called app. The remote consultation is implemented by a server application collecting physician availability to answer upon client support requests. The app can be used by first intervention clinicians and allows reducing delays and decision errors in emergency interventions. Thus, best decision, certified and supported by cardiologists, can be obtained in case of heart attacks and first interventions even by base medical doctors able to produce and send an ECG. RCC tests have been performed, and the prototype is freely available as a service for testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes a short range wireless telecardiology system with the objective of transmitting electrocardiogram (ECG) signal for remote end acquisition. Topics discussed include the acquired signal being compressed using a combination of modified delta encoding and run length encoding technique using a wireless transceiver operating in 2.4 GigaHertz (GHz) industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band. Also mentioned is computational simplicity allowing the use of low-end microprocessor.

E-Health focusing on mobile telemonitoring, detection and management of unrecognized health abnormalities and disorders in physically active people is a major field of interest. Telemedicine services are most frequently requested in the area of: (a) pre-participation screening of athletes; (b) athletes monitoring mainly during extreme sports; and (c) home-exercise training telecare, especially for patients with chronic diseases who participate in rehabilitation programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim To assess feasibility and reliability of telecardiology technologies applied to a region-wide public emergency health-care service. Methods About 27,841 patients from all over Apulia (19.362 km2, 4 million inhabitants) were referred from October 2004 until April 2006 to public emergency health-care number “118” and underwent ECG evaluation according to a previously fixed inclusion protocol. Data recorded were transmitted with mobile telephone support to a telecardiology “hub” active 24-h a day. Hospitalization or further examinations were arranged by emergency physicians on the basis of ECG diagnosis and consultation. Results Thirty-nine percent of patients complained of chest pain (CP) or epigastric pain, 26% loss of consciousness, 10% breathlessness, and 7% palpitations. Atrial fibrillation (AF) was diagnosed in 11.68% of patients and ST-elevation acute myocardial infarction (STEMI) in 1.91%. Among patients with CP, ECG showed STEMI in only 3.84% of cases, theoretically eligible for fibrinolysis or primary PCI; patients with STEMI complained of CP in 78.94% of cases. Of the patients, 65.28% with STEMI were from small towns without coronary care units, thus benefiting from an immediate pre-hospital diagnosis. Among patients with palpitations, only 10.27% of subjects showed ECG signs of supra-ventricular tachycardia and 25.18% of AF; other subjects avoided further improper hospitalization or emergency department monitoring. Conclusions This first region-wide leading experience shows the feasibility and reliability of telecardiology applied to a public emergency health-care service. Telemedicine protocols would probably be useful in lowering the number of improper hospitalizations and shortening delay in the diagnosis process of some heart diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telecardiology may help confront the growing burden of monitoring the reliability of implantable defibrillators/pacemakers. Herein, we suggest that the evolving capabilities of implanted devices to monitor patients’ status (heart rhythm, fluid overload, right ventricular pressure, oximetry, etc.) may imply a shift from strictly device-centered follow-up to perspectives centered on the patient (and patient-device interactions). Such approaches could provide improvements in health care delivery and clinical outcomes, especially in the field of heart failure. Major professional, policy, and ethical issues will have to be overcome to enable real-world implementation. This challenge may be relevant for the evolution of our health care systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of patients implanted with dual-chamber pacemakers exhibit symptoms of recurrent or new atrial fibrillation. Scheduling follow-up visits for every 6–12 months in this setting may be disadvantageous on three grounds. First, delayed information about the onset of atrial fibrillation does not allow an immediate reaction with pharmacological or dedicated pacing therapy. Second, the efficacy of the chosen therapy cannot be evaluated until the next scheduled follow-up. Third, real-time awareness of a significant atrial fibrillation burden is critical to use appropriate anticoagulation therapy for the prevention of thromboembolic events. The new Home Monitoring technology (Biotronik, Berlin) offers real-time transmission of diagnostic data stored in the pacemaker memory to the physician. This may represent a useful tool for the detection and treatment of patients with atrial fibrillation. Daily documentation of atrial rhythm via Home Monitoring allows a quick reaction to the onset of atrial fibrillation and real-time control of the therapeutic efficacy. The ongoing, international, randomized Home-PAT clinical trial aims at defining and quantifying the importance of Home Monitoring for the diagnosis and treatment of atrial fibrillation in patients with dual-chamber pacemakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Der Radiologe is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)