Wireless communication and RFID based handheld database and medical diagnostic system

In the recent decades, Egypt has witnessed an increase need for portable handheld medical diagnostic systems that connected remotely or wirelessly to the central healthcare database systems. The main benefits of these systems are the further onsite disease investigations that were consolidated with the patient medical record history. In this paper, a low-cost, light-weight, handheld, and wirelessly/wirely-connected medical diagnostic system is proposed. The main features of the on-hand system are: (1) Fast retrieval of the patient basic information and medical history using a RFID card that is uniquely assigned to and held by each patient. (2) The system is wirelessly connected via a network module to the hospital information system (HIS) for patient data query and updating. (3) It has a wired connection via USB to any computer to retrieve and review the patient data either form the device memory card or from the central database. (4) The system is packed with a high capacity memory card for new data storage in case of lack of wireless or wired network connectivity. (5) The station is equipped with diagnostic ECG acquisition, temperature monitoring, and NIBP measurement modules for the onsite patient assessment. (6) Smart interactive graphical touch-screen for easy manipulation and accessing the system whole functions. (7) Long lifetime rechargeable battery that can operate the entire system for at least 6 hours. The new system has the potential for allowing such technology to be available at low cost thus providing cost-effective healthcare.