Patent attributes
A method and associated systems for generic data compression. A mobile device receives realtime data from a medical-monitoring device, such as a heart monitor, worn by a patient. The invention compresses and encodes this data into ASCII text characters, which are transmitted via a commonly available low-bandwidth text-messaging service, such as the SMS service supported by most cell phones. The text messages are received by a second mobile device, which decodes the text characters into their original form and displays them to a healthcare practitioner. More critical portions of the data are encoded by a high-precision lossless compression mechanism. In some embodiments, the two mobile devices may be cell phones and the second device may have the ability to interpret the decoded information in order to determine whether to directly or indirectly alert the practitioner or other parties of an exceptional condition detected by the medical monitor.
