In-Flight Vital Signs Monitoring FLIGHT TEST

Following approval of the FFA to use the ProPaq monitor device to broadcast vital signs on a single round trip, on July 31s. 1997, EKG, blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, arterial O2 saturation, arterial CO2 saturation, repiratory rate and real time video, were successfully transmitted from a 757 Boeing, flying from Chicago to Los Angeles, round trip.

Vital signs, still pictures and real time video were sent to the following facilities:

1. Medical Dept of American Airlines, Dallas Fort Worth
2.Hospital Santojanni-Teleintar, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
3. Saddle Back Memorial- Laguna Hills, California.

The transmission lasted for approximately 4 hours. During this time a computerized vital signs simulator, connected to the portable monitor was used to generate twenty different pathological hemodynamic scenarios for the ground station to diagnose. Also a whole cardiac arrest protocol was entertained with the California station.

Ten minutes after take-off both, monitor and laptop computer were turned on. Internet connection was achieved by using the AT&T AIRONE wireless cellular phone to dial up an ISP in Michigan. Although the computer modem output could pass data as fast as 33,6 Kbps the bandwidth was 4,800 bps.

In this picture Dr. Montgomery (window) is sending data to Argentina while Dr. Gandsas watches the monitor.

A second analog line was used to maintain a voice communication channel always opened between the aircraft and the recipient station. In addition Internet Conference Professional from Vocaltec was used to create a virtual room so all recipients could "chat" among eachother and with the air-team.

At the end of the simulation actual human vital signs were taken from Dr. Gandsas (blue shirt) in a non-invasive fashion and transmitted to the ground in similar manner.


LifeLink application compresses vital signs data from a ProPaq monitoring unit
to send it to all recipient stations.

The main advantage of using the Internet is the ability to reach any medical institution on the planet as the Internet communication protocol is being shared by any computer disregarding its operative system. Furthermore, if an unscheduled landing is considered, crew members can broadcast patient's data to the closest health care center depending on the aircraft's geographical airspace position, and accelerate the decision making process before the patient arrives at the destination.

This technology sends data from the phone handset to a transmitter in the plane's belly and then down to one of the 130 radio base stations. From there it is sent to one of the ground switch nodes, and then over to the public telephone network to the Internet provider server modem.

By using this device drugs contained in the "medical kit" can be safely administered and the effects closely monitored by the aircraft personnel or by the ground medical staff. High risk patients can be also continuously monitored from their seats by a designated facility during the flight until landing. This can be achieved by providing the patient with a portable transmitter that will send EKG signal via telemetry to the monitoring unit in the aircraft, and again to the ground by means of the cellular phone-Internet link.

This experiment,the first of its kind, proved the hypothesis that cellular technology aboard commercial aircraft can be potentially used as an cost-effective alternative to perform an on-line triage during a medical in-flight emergency.