Telemedicine has received increasing attention in the past years as our existing medical infrastructures face several challenges precipitated by the confluence of social, economic, and demographic issues, which demand more scalable and affordable healthcare solutions. The telemedicine initiative seeks to reduce healthcare costs while increasing quality of life by focusing on proactive management of wellness/prevention, early detection of disease, and optimal maintenance of chronic conditions. However, existing telemedicine platforms are yet to compete with traditional in-person medical practices due to the lack of instruments for patient monitoring, assessment, and diagnosis. 

To enhance the functionality of telemedicine platforms and realize the grand vision, state-of-the-art wireless communication and sensing research, ranging from 5G wireless networking, mobile sensing, Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality (AR), and mobile/cloud/edge computing, has been integrated into telemedicine services. Compared to the existing video/voice-based systems, the next-generation telemedicine platforms will be equipped with: a) contactless sensors for unobtrusive monitoring users' physiological signals, body movement, and activity levels, along with general environmental conditions; b) communication systems that permit (high throughput) real-time 3D interactions between patients and doctors; c) intelligent personal devices that collect and analyze data from the sensing and communication systems to compile personalized health status information, giving healthcare professionals the capacity to treat patients in geographically distributed locations.

If you would like to know about the connections between wireless sensing and communication research and  telemedicine, register EE693e (CRN 85304): Spec Topics in EE (Computer Hardware): Wireless Sensing and Communication for Telemedicine, to start our 18-weeks journal toward a modern, ubiquitous, and affordable remote healthcare system.