Medical emergency aid through telematics: design, implementation guidelines and analysis of user requirements for the MERMAID project.

MERMAID is an EU financed telemedicine project with global reach and 24-h, multilingual capability. It aspires to provide a model for the provision of health care services based on the electronic transmission of medical information, via ISDN based videoconferencing. This model will not be limited to medical diagnostics but it will encompass all cases where the actual delivery of health care services involves a patient who is not located where the provider is. Its implementation requires the commissioning of an expensive telecommunications infrastructure and the exploration of a number of solutions. In fact, all categories of telemedical applications (audio and video conferencing, multimedia communications, flat file and image transfer with low, medium and high bandwidth data requirements) are considered while the full range of network choices (digital land lines, cellular/wireless, satellite and broadband) are being tested in terms of cost/performance tradeoffs that are inherent to them and the developmental stage each of these options occupies in their in its life cycle. Finally, out that MERMAID utilises advanced land based line transmission technologies to aid the remote patient by making available the specialist care that is best suited in the particular case.