Broadband Multimedia Sensor Networks in Healthcare Applications

Since the first special issue on “Telemedicine and Applications” was published in April 2000, advances in broadband network communication technology both wired and wirelesses have expanded telemedicine to a pressing need of high speed networks in medicine and public health care. Recent achievements in these fields have helped to better understanding of computing and communication infrastructure associated with various applications. With appropriately developed advanced infrastructures in network technology the future medicine should provide the increasingly aging world with great benefits for public health care. Such applications are expected to improve future healthcare practices, especially in the areas of telemedicine, sensor network-integrated health care, electronic health records, chronic disease monitoring. It is believed that the wireless broadband network will eventually merge with the wired broadband network to offer both reliability and mobility in the future telemedicine and health care applications. Keeping this goal in mind this special issue is devoted to the theme on “Broadband Multimedia Sensor Networks in Healthcare Applications” in addressing and focusing on the issues of wired and wireless networks in the state-of-art medicine and health care on applications of high speed networks to medicine and healthcare as well as mutual understanding between the network technology and medicine and health care applications. A total of seven papers are selected, each of which is briefly described as follows. The first paper on “International Internet2 Connectivity and Performance in Medical Imaging Applications” by B.J. Liu, Z. Zhou, M.A. Gutierrez, J. Documet, L. Chan and H.K. Huang describes a methodology of connecting international Internet2 among three different internationally linked sites located in University of Southern California in USA, Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong and University of Sao Paulo in Brazil respectively. The Internet2, also known as Next Generation Internet (NGI) is an advanced high speed computer network which has been widely used for medical image communication for teleradiology. Its connectivity and security issues were previously investigated via a local site case study in the special issue on Telemedicine and Application, April 2000 (Journal of High Speed Networks, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 3–13, April 2000). This paper further explores the utility of the Internet2 in connecting three international sites with applications in clinical environments. The second paper on “The Role of a Data Grid in Worldwide Imaging-Based Clinical Trials” by Z. Zhou, M. Gutierrez, J. Documet, L. Chan, H.K. Huang and B. Liu develops a data grid architecture for worldwide imaging-based clinical trials where the data testbed for study is set up among three international sites described in the first paper, University of Southern California in USA, Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong and University of Sao Paulo in Brazil which are connected by Internet2 via the Hong Kong Academic and Research Network (HARNET) and Brazilian National Research and Education Network (RNP2). The clinical trials considered in this paper are image-based experiments where medical images provide a unique and fast diagnosis with visual assessment. The third paper on “Sensor-Based Pervasive Healthcare System: Design and Implementation” by H.Y. Kung, C.Y. Hsu and M.-H. Lin proposes a Sensor-based Pervasive Healthcare (SPH) system which can effectively reduce health labor cost and provide a streamlined, convenient and low healthcare cost platform for patients and professional medical staff. In order to accomplish its goal, the SPH is developed by integrating three systems, Home Healthcare End (H2E) system, e-healthcare Service Provider (ESP) and e-healthcare Control Center (EC2). The