Hemodialysis patient management by telemedicine: design and implementation.

The authors describe the design and implementation of a personal computer based telemedicine system for managing patients by telemedicine. With three identical systems connected by high speed T1 lines, the physician (or allied healthcare giver) can interact, by videoconferencing, and by using multimedia files, with patients at two remote hemodialysis sites. The physician is able to visualize specifically the patient's fistula/graft, and auscultate fistula, heart and lung sounds, and incorporate still pictures or audio sounds in the patient's multimedia database folder, which also contains an electronic and paperless medical record. In addition there is the capability of downloading into this database all the machine parameters during dialysis.