Innovation of Homely Rehab with Help of Telemedical Services

Abstract

Caused by demographic changes the costs for the health system increase in most industrial countries. To encounter this problem this paper presents a new telemedical approach for homely rehab. The importance of homely rehab is not just to decrease the arising expenses of hospitalization as well the down times of employees. By deploying an integrated usage of information and microsystem-based technology a sustainable rehab is getting possible at acceptable costs. The network presented in this paper integrates the patients, rehab clinics, family doctor and medical service providers (MSP) and so ensures complete medical care. Latter are responsible for gathering, summarizing and evaluating of the patient’s vital signs such as blood pressure, body temperature or pulse. The detection is realized with help of micro sensors that are worn on the body, and who transfer the parameters into a central database. By this means a continuously monitoring is provided, while all authorized network participants, such as the rehab clinic or the patient itself, can access the data in almost real-time. Beyond the medical and cost advantages, the network has the potential to establish further value added services (VAS) that hedge the business model for both, telemedical application and service providers.