A web 2.0 telemedicine system integrating TV-centric services and Personal Health Records

In this paper we propose a novel telemedicine system capable of medical data acquisition, transmission, integration and analysis. In detail, the proposed system consists of: 1) a wearable acquisition system for ECG (electrocardiogram), EEG (electroencephalogram), body temperature and blood pressure, 2) a storage/analysis center where the acquired medical data are integrated into a Personal Health Record (PHR) system that also provides data analysis tools that can assist medical doctors in their diagnosis, and 3) a TV-centric set-top-box that manages both patient-medical doctor communication and interactive services, such as customized TV channels promoting individual adoption of healthy lifestyles and self-care. The proposed system uses standard semantic web technologies, such as RDF, and common ontologies, such as FOAF and CCR, for data description and integration. This makes the system a “Medicine 2.0” application, interoperable with existing medical data storage/analysis systems.