CHAPTER 6 : INTERNET IN TELEMEDICINE

V.DELLAMEA


Being telemedicine a communication-based technology, and the Internet a cheap and widespread communication medium it is importan to understand the Telemedicine tasks that can be done in Internet

Internet can be defined as :

1.- An actitude about interconnecting and intercommunicationg without a single central owner entity

2.- Physical collection of routers and circuits anywhere in the world

3.- Connections using a standard common protocol:

IP ( Internet Protocol )

TCP ( Transmission control protocol )

4.- A set of shared resources ( level application layer )

STANDARDS : Apart from the common protocol ( at present moment do not guarantee QoS = Quality of service ) networking standards are not yet fixed.

 

The IP ( Internet Protocol ) allows the exchange of basic units called datagrams:

The data is place in a structure ( Internet Protocol packed )
Is addressed through a computer port ( Socket )
Towards an indentification number ( user / computer ):

The ID is a 32 bits number ( 4 numbers separetad by dots and associated to a name )

 

The TCP ( Transmission control protocol ) : The exchange of datagrams

is done through an Application Protocol making a specific task

- Telnet ( Virtual terminal protocol ): log into a remote host

- e-mail (electronic mail):

Protocol:SMTP( simple mail transfer protocol )

Message format ( MIME )

- FTP ( file transfer protocol ): send and received files.

- Other : Gopher, Usernet news, mailing lists

 

Telemedicine applications in Internet :

1.- CSCW ( Computer supported cooperative work )

2.- Medical Data sharing ( multimedia workspace ) :WWW

 

CSCW ( see Chapter 2 and 7 )

Distributed information concurrently use by a group of users.Include WWW

In Telemedicine : CSCD Computer support cooperative diagnosis
May or may not include distributed computing in the following working schemes

* Client/Server.

- Server acomplish the main task
- Client acts as user interface and preprocesses data for the server

* Multiagents : Each agent accomplish specialized functions, being able to be a service provider as well as a client

WWW or World Wide Web : A wide-area hypermedia information retrieval aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.
Structure :

1.- Client/server protocol composed of two parts

Protocol of communications : HTTP = Hypertext transmission protocol

Hypermedia document definition: HTML = hypertext markup language

JAVA language compiler: javac
bit code interpreter : java
standard classes: AWT....

2.- Common input and interaction with the server through

Forms

CGI ( Common gateway Interface ): standard interface between WWW and server side applications ( communication between HTTP server and other programs )

3.- Resources accesible with a single client : HTML documents, images through HTTP,FTP,Gopher ect..

Intelligent resource allocations : URL ( resource link )

PROBLEMS arrise when trying to introduce multimedia communications , because TCP/IP networks are limited by the lack of standards that guarantied QoS
New resources : Multicast BackBone ( MBONE ). An experimental virtual network superimposed upor Internet using IP multicast, which main application is videoconferencing

 


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Revisado: martes, 10 junio 1997.
Con el soporte informático y de comunicaciones del CICEI, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria