Short review and feedback on the book Telemedicine Technologies second edition by B. Fong, A.C.M Fong and C.K Li, 2020#
ISBN 9781119575757
I will lecture on wireless communication in telemedicine for healthcare technology students this coming spring. While searching for a textbook, I prioritized a focus on telemedicine applications. I was initially excited to find a book with dedicated chapters on wireless technologies and telemedicine applications, but I was disappointed after a detailed review.
I reached out twice to the author, however the author did not respond to my feedback, so I am sharing my findings here.
A comment on Amazon would be more helpful, than my website with low traffic. Unfortunately, my new account does not meet the minimum posting requirements on Amazon.
After reading the first two chapters and most of the third chapter in detail, I do not recommend this book, even I could not find any other book that brings many aspects of communication technologies in telemedicine together in a single book. Reasons:
The text includes verbose and redundant language. Most of the ideas could be communicated in much shorter paragraphs. potential inaccuracies, and fails to provide clear guidance for designing or choosing wireless systems in telemedicine applications.
there are potential inaccuracies in the text and many major mistakes in the content, which will distract an undergraduate student while reading.
the authors do not present a clear guidance for designing wireless systems, e.g., choosing the right wireless technology for an application. Most of the guidance feels basic, general and rule-of-thumb-based. General info like in GHz range, we should pay attention to rain-induced attenuation, however it is not directly clear what to exactly do in this scenario, especially for an undergraduate student.
The first edition was published in 2011 and some examples are from 2005. Even the authors added some recent literature references, older references distract. As a reader I often asked if a presented technology is still in use. For example with the rise of 5G, WirelessMAN or WiFiMAX may be less relevant today. The same applies to IrDA due to the rise of Li-Fi.
I want to stress that I focused only on the first three chapters.
As a conclusion, I will compress the first chapters into an introductory lecture, but will refrain from structuring my lecture around this book. I will take a look into a book that focuses on wireless technology fundamentals.
Below, I highlight specific issues I encountered in the text.
Chapter 1#
like USBs (universal serial buses) and memory cards,
USB sticks
1.5 The Growth of E-health to M-health
The chapter does not introduce the concepts E- and M-health.
Chapter 2#
no distinction is drawn between additive noise and distortion (distortion changes the original signal)
… Even before this, wired communication appeared as early as 1794 when C. Chappe started sending telegraphs visually through a line of sight (LOS) communication channel. The meaning
Optical telegraph is an example of wireless communication
… However, radio LOS is slightly broader than visual LOS because the radio horizon extends beyond the optical horizon as radio waves follow slightly curved paths in the atmosphere.
Not only the radio but also visual light is refracted by the atmosphere. You are right that radio LOS is slightly broader but the nuance in the former sentence is missing.
Combining the two ushered in the beginning of optical communications when J. Tindall discovered around the 1870s that light followed a curved water jet as it was poured from a small hole in a
It is not clear what is combined
This person could be rather https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Daniel_Collado
The bandwidth of any given channel is fixed
That is not necessarily true. For example, in 802.11ac, the bandwidth is dynamically changed. Maybe you should give a definition of your channel.
The number of bits n per baud has a simple relationship of: \(n = log2 L\)
n can be decimal, so it is better to call average number of bits, compared to number of bits.
equation 2.4
the equal sign should not be at the level of the index b
The noise level N corresponds to the minimum separation between two levels before the noise causes error to cross the boundary of the adjacent level.
I think it does not correspond to the minimum separation between two levels because N is power and not amplitude. (This also the reason why we have a square root).
(93/42/EEC for Medical Devices
seems to be withdrawn and replaced by the 2017 EU Medical Device Regulation (EU 2017/745)
75 Mbps;
semicolon
IR is classified into three different categories
third one is not discussed
It is often use in small ECG fragment transmission.
Would be great if you could provide examples. The only option I could find was: https://www.cardiacdirect.com/product/cardioline-ar1200view-ecg-machine/ however the IR version is not sold anymore, I believe.
A basic WLAN consists of at least one access point (AP) and the mobile client (MC).
the term mobile client is not explicitly used in the official Wi-Fi standards. I would use station
Information security is always a great issue, owing to its popularity and sharing of the unlicensed ISM band.
IMHO this aspect has more an effect on the availability (and thus safety) rather than security, e.g., due to jamming with easily accessible devices that emit in the ISM range.
2.2.3 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) and Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi is a WLAN tech, but WLAN is not necessarily Wi-Fi. WLAN can be any kind of wireless networking, Bluetooth, ZigBee etc
. Currently, there is no global standard operating frequency: 868 MHz in Europe, 915 MHz in the United States, 950 MHz in Japan, and 2.4 GHz in most other parts of the world. In
2.4 GHz may be used globally. The text gives the impression that in Europe only 868 MHz is used.
It is so cheap that a transceiver is available for less than $1 per unit
I could not find a transceiver for less than $1 on Mouser and Farnell
All these will result in loss of signal strength, collective known as “fading.”
As I understand from other sources, where signal strength is more deterministic, fading models random effects.
(low frequency: 135 kHz
I would mention that this value is the rough range. According the Wikipedia LF: 125–134.2 kHz and 140–148.5 kHz)
Chapter 3#
. The fact that people without special needs may not carry any transmitting identification …
may not => does not have to
We learned in Chapter 2 that signal frequencies in excess of several GHz generally penetrate materials better than lower frequency waves.
Not true.
The 3D space is represented by “six dimensions,” effectively the +/− of x, y, and z axis.
conflates dimensions with directions