A mobile medical monitoring system: concept, design and deployment

Over recent years 'mobile health' has gained increasing attention. It can be regarded as an extension/specialisation of the broader area of electronic health. Due to the miniaturisation of technical devices and the enormous increase of processing, storage and networking capacities, nearly all telemedicine areas have become a field for research, trying to support home-and hospital-care as well as administrative processes. This paper adds a new element to this research by introducing a mobile medical monitoring system, which is presently under official trial with support from major health insurance companies. Although used primarily for the monitoring of patients suffering from Parkinson's disease up to now, we outline how it could be used in the future for many other types of disease or for the monitoring of clinical trials. In addition to the system design and deployment we discuss some early experiences from the ongoing field trials, leading to a short discussion on specific business strategies.