Department of Software Engineering, National Kaohsiung Normal University, No. 62, Shenjhong Road, Yanchao District, Kaohsiung 82444, Taiwan.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2013 Aug 2;10(8):3246-62. doi: 10.3390/ijerph10083246.
Mobile handheld devices are rapidly using to implement healthcare services around the World. Fundamentally, these services utilize telemedicine technologies. A disconnection of a mobile telemedicine system usually results in an interruption, which is embarrassing, and reconnection is necessary during the communication session. In this study, the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is adopted to build a stable session tunnel to guarantee seamless switching among heterogeneous wireless communication standards, such as Wi-Fi and 3G. This arrangement means that the telemedicine devices will not be limited by a fixed wireless connection and can switch to a better wireless channel if necessary. The tunnel can transmit plain text, binary data, and video streams. According to the evaluation of the proposed software-based SCTP-Tunnel middleware shown, the performance is lower than anticipated and is slightly slower than a fixed connection. However, the transmission throughput is still acceptable for healthcare professionals in a healthcare enterprise or home care site. It is necessary to build more heterogeneous wireless protocols into the proposed tunnel-switching scheme to support all possible communication protocols. In addition, SCTP is another good choice for promoting communication in telemedicine and healthcare fields.
移动手持设备正在迅速被用于在全球范围内实施医疗保健服务。从根本上讲，这些服务利用远程医疗技术。移动远程医疗系统的连接中断通常会导致中断，这是令人尴尬的，在通信会话期间需要重新连接。在本研究中，采用流控制传输协议（SCTP）来构建稳定的会话隧道，以确保在 Wi-Fi 和 3G 等异构无线通信标准之间进行无缝切换。这种安排意味着远程医疗设备将不受固定无线连接的限制，如果需要，它们可以切换到更好的无线信道。该隧道可以传输纯文本、二进制数据和视频流。根据对所提出的基于软件的 SCTP-Tunnel 中间件的评估，性能低于预期，比固定连接略慢。但是，对于医疗保健企业或家庭护理站点中的医疗保健专业人员来说，传输吞吐量仍然是可以接受的。有必要将更多异构无线协议构建到所提出的隧道切换方案中，以支持所有可能的通信协议。此外，SCTP 是促进远程医疗和医疗保健领域通信的另一个不错选择。
