Patent ID: 7769456

Claim:
A telemetry system for enabling radio-frequency (RF) communications between an implantable medical device and an external device over a wireless medium, comprising: an antenna, an RF transmitter, an RF receiver, and a controller incorporated into each of the implantable and external devices, wherein the RF transmitter and receiver of each device are tunable and may be switched among a plurality of different communications channels which differ in frequency; wherein the controller is interfaced to the RF transmitter and receiver in each device to enable data transfer over a selected channel; wherein the controllers of the implantable and external devices are programmed to use associated timing circuitry to divide communications session time into frequency hopping frames each of which contains a plurality of session time slots of defined length; and, wherein the external device and implantable device controllers are programmed to synchronously switch, upon expiration of a predetermined session time slot, among a plurality of communications channels during a communications session according to a synchronous channel scan list that specifies the number of session time slots within each frequency hopping frame and assigns a communications channel that is to be used for data transfer during each session time slot while maintaining communications.