Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications Volume 2010, Article ID 357156, 7 pages doi:10.1155/2010/357156 Research Article Tile-Ippokratis: The Experience of an Ehealth Platform for the Provision of Health Care Services in the Island of Chios and Cyprus Homer Papadopoulos Department of Applied Technologies, National Center for Scientiﬁc Research “Demokritos”, 15310 Attiki, Greece Correspondence should be addressed to Homer Papadopoulos, homerpap@dat.demokritos.gr Received 2 November 2009; Revised 2 May 2010; Accepted 19 July 2010 Academic Editor: Tasos Dagiuklas Copyright © 2010 Homer Papadopoulos. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Tile-Ippokratis proposed an integrated platform for the provision of low-cost ehealth services to citizens in southeast Mediterranean area (Island of Chios and Cyprus). The aim of the paper is to present the architecture, the design, and the evaluation results of this platform. The platform based on already evaluated state-of-the-art mobile ehealth systems and using wireless and terrestrial telecommunication networks is able to provide the following health care services: (i) telecollaboration and teleconsultation services between health care personnel and between health care personnel and patients and (ii) ehealth services for “at risk” citizens such as elderly and patients with chronic diseases (Island of Chios) and postsurgery patients (Cyprus). The ehealth systems supported capabilities for vital signal measurements (ECG 1 lead, SPO2, HR, BP, weight, and temperature), an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) infrastructure, and video conference, along with communication gateways for data transmission over ADSL, GPRS, and WLAN networks. 1. Introduction Ehealth is an umbrella term which refers to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the provision of health services from distance. Ehealth, distinguished into eCare, eLearning, eSurveillance, and eGoverment/eAdministration [1], is one of the most rapidly growing areas of health. According to a global survey of the World Health Organization (WHO) there is a signiﬁcant demand for the provision of generic tools to support the clinical (elearning tools, access to digital libraries, databases to support evidence-based medicine, telemedical systems, remote diagnostic systems, electronic patient records, deci- sion support systems, etc.) and administrative (e.g., ﬁnancial support systems, patient referral systems, etc.) functions of health care services in WHO member states [2]. The above is in line with the latest attempts, which have shown that the use of ICT for the provision of healthcare services across geographic, temporal, social, and cultural barriers gave a great promise to help people in isolated and remote regions to gain access in health care services [3]. The evolution on ehealth systems supported by advanced algorithms, high performance computers, sensors, moni- toring devices, and telecommunication networks permits the provision of good quality of medical care even to remote/isolated regions, the information exchange, and the distribution of medical knowledge among health care professionals [3]. Ehealth applications have been successfully used for the provision of emergency ehealth in understaﬀed areas like, among others, rural health centers [4, 5] as well as for home monitoring and home care [6, 7], whenever is needed. Recent studies have shown that the home monitoring of elderly patients, as well as patients with chronic diseases, increases the individual’s comfort, enhances quality of life, and encourages the patient empowerment while it reduces the number of needless transfers at hospitals and the cost of provided health care services [7–9].