A digital television based solution for remote health care of rural people

The health assistance of people living in rural areas represents an issue of great relevance, because of the costs related to moving health operators, the time needed to reach remote sites, and the high number of people needing health care. At the same time, some assistance requests may be solved through a remote interaction with the patient, without the need of a medical examination. Starting from this considerations, our paper proposes a telecom solution, based on the interactive features of Digital Terrestrial Television, that makes possible an easy (and low cost) audio and video connection between the patient and either an information server and a health care center. Due to the private nature of the information exchanged, a certified procedure is requested and implemented, through the use of smart cards. All these functions can be accomplished through a proper configuration of the receiver middleware, and a suited interactive application.