M. Nakamura (Japan), Y. Yang (PRC), S. Kubota, K. Wasaki, Y. Shidama, K. Kasahara, S. Saito, Y. Miura, M. Takizawa, and S. Murase (Japan)
WirelessLAN, The Japanese Alps, Telemedicine, Stethoscope and MPEG-2
Medical clinics are opened temporally in the summer season in mountain huts at an altitude of about 3000m in the Japanese Alps, where no broadband network access is available. Hospitals at the foot of these mountain ranges are connected to the mountain huts by an experimental telemedicine network to provide climbers medical support from doctors at the hospitals. The network is composed of newly developed long-range wireless LANs for connecting mountain huts and three CATV networks for connecting hospitals. MPEG-2-compressed video and stethoscope sound having an almost TV broadcast quality were successfully transferred from these mountain huts to the hospitals over this network to diagnose diseases such as high altitude sickness, especially pulmonary edema and so on, which require emergency treatments. It is confirmed that the quality of the transmissions are high enough for doctors to diagnose patients who suffer from these diseases during climbing in high altitude mountains and this network can improve swiftness for the emergency treatment of patients in high mountain huts.
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