Design of a real-time emergency telemedicine system for remote medical diagnosis

•It is very difficult to perform diagnostic procedures during ambulance transport.•A real time emergency telemedicine system for remote medical diagnosis was designed.•The system was tested in real circumstances in ambulances and hospital.•The designed system opens new perspectives for remote medical diagnosis.

In routine clinical practice of emergency care, it is very difficult to perform diagnostic procedures during ambulance transport. This can lead to a delay in the patient's diagnosis and, consequently, in the patient's treatment until arrival at the hospital. Although this situation does not imply notable risk in the majority of pathologies, in anticoagulated patients, this delay can be fatal. In this study, a system is discussed that would minimise the response time before the medical administration of anti-haemorrhagic or antithrombotic treatments that would mitigate or even eliminate the dramatic consequences of the progression of intracranial haemorrhage. The aim of this study is to design a real-time emergency telemedicine system for remote medical diagnosis and to demonstrate that it is possible to perform haematological tests in an ambulance in terms of an international normalised ratio (INR) using wireless transmission, accurately and in real-time, to the referral hospital. The main and novel component of our system is a hybrid network that enables secure long-distance communication from an ambulance. The results of the tests in the ambulance are such that there were no significant differences between the values obtained from the samples analysed during travel in the ambulance and those analysed in the laboratory. Transmitting this information immediately to the hospital may involve administering early treatment during the transfer as prescribed by the medical staff that have access to both the data and to the patient's clinical history. In conclusion, the telemedicine system designed for real-time emergencies opens new perspectives for remote medical diagnosis.

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