Patent ID: 8903308

Claim:
A patient monitoring system configured for providing communications between medical devices used by patients and a remote monitoring device via an internet-accessible wireless communications network, said system comprising: a medical device to be used by a patient; a patient identification device capable of receiving an input indicative of patient identification information of the patient and of transmitting the patient identification information; and at least one relay module comprising: a first receiver capable of wirelessly receiving data over a wireless relay network; a second receiver capable of wirelessly receiving data over the internet-accessible wireless communications network a first transmitter capable of wirelessly transmitting the received data to a wireless relay module over the wireless relay network; a second transmitter capable of wirelessly transmitting the received data over an internet-accessible wireless communications network to the remote monitoring device; and a controller coupled to the first and second transmitters, wherein: one or more of the patient identification device and the medical device are capable of transmitting patient identification data and medical device identification data to the at least one relay module over the wireless relay network, said controller of said at least one relay module is configured to select one of said first transmitter or said second transmitter for transmitting the identification information to the remote monitoring device, said at least one relay module being further configured to receive an acknowledgement status transmitted by the remote monitoring device at one of said first and second receivers, and to transmit the acknowledgement status by said first transmitter to the medical device over the wireless relay network, and the medical device being further configured to receive the acknowledgement status and transmit medical device data corresponding to an output of at least one sensor of the medical device to the at least one relay module via the wireless relay network when the received acknowledgement status represents a particular status.