Development of ICT-based Mobile Telemedicine System with Multi Communication Links for Urban and Rural Areas in Indonesia

This paper describes the development of ICT-Based Mobile Telemedicine system with multi communication links for both urban and rural areas in Indonesia. The mobile telemedicine system is particularly needed in many remote and underserved areas in Indonesia, such as Sukabumi. The system has two main units, namely a Mobile telemedicine unit (patient side) and a base unit ( doctors side). Data transaction between these units will be implemented via multi communication links, viz. radio, internet, GSM/CDMA mobile phones, and fixed phones. To alleviate communication management problems, a unit called telemedicine arbiter will be developed. This unit consists of a communication manager module and medical information concentrator /interface module. The operation of the system will be controlled by a dedicated software that handles information exchange based on TCP/IP protocol. Selection of the communication links depends on the availability of the local infrastructure. At the moment, measurement of signal strength and line of sight distances includes elevation of target locations is in progress; the current results are encouraging. In general, the telecommunication infrastructure in Sukabumi mostly satisfy the requirement. The next step is to design and implement the telemedicine arbiter unit starting from the communication manager that meets with the specification. Meanwhile, medical information transmission tests between BME laboratory ITB and RSUD Syamsudin Sukabumi through the Internet are in progress.