Patent ID: 8255238

Claim:
A system for the remote monitoring of patient physiological data acquired from at least one patient sensor, said patient physiological data capable of being plotted graphically versus time, the system comprising: (a) a sensor data collection system for collecting said patient physiological data; (b) a healthcare facility data processing and data storage system operable to (i) process and store said patient physiological data, wherein the processing includes generating multi-channel patient physiological data from the collected patient physiological data (ii) process and store clinical information system (CIS) data collected from external repositories and provide the physiological data and the CIS data to external repositories and devices, and (iii) provide an IT management console for monitoring exchanges of data between external repositories and devices and said healthcare facility data processing and storage system; (c) a first graphical application program interface (API) system configured to operate in conjunction with said healthcare facility data processing and data storage system, said first graphical API for conditioning said patient physiological data for streaming across a cellular network and for reception and display on a handheld data processing device by compressing said data; (d) a handheld data processing device operable for the reception and display of said multi-channel patient physiological data received from said cellular network, the display of multi-channel patient physiological data comprising simultaneously displaying two or more unique data sets for one patient in real-time, one data set configured for display in a software-generated semi-transparent overlay such that each data set is legibly viewable, and wherein the patient physiological data is displayed in real-time when the handheld data processing device is online and the patient physiological data is cached for future display when the handheld data processing device is offline; and (e) a second graphical API system operating in conjunction with said handheld data processing device, said second graphical API system operable to condition said patient physiological data for display on said remote data processing device by formatting said data to optimize data presentation for reduced size presentation of said data on said display screen in said handheld data processing device, said formatting step providing a reduction in a volume of said data and a reduction in a period of time required to render said data on the display of said handheld data processing device, wherein said handheld data processing device is configured to buffer said data and display a real-time section of said data as the real-time portion is streamed and a historical section of said data stored in said buffer, wherein a displayed section of said data is collected over a smaller period of time than all of the data stored in the buffer.