QoE in telemedicine
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QoE (Quality of Experience) can be briefly defined as the degree at which a multimedia service meets the users' expectations. A more elaborate definition of QoE is: "Quality of Experience (QoE) is the degree of delight or annoyance of the user of an application or service. It results from the fulfilment of his or her expectations with respect to the utility and / or enjoyment of the application or service in the light of the user's personality and current state." QoE in telemedicine is of the highest importance. Indeed, when a patient's health is at stake, audio video communications must reach a certain quality level which enables a good understanding of the remote situation and which permits to make a correct diagnosis, in order to remotely provide a good assistance. Therefore, when a medical expert must remotely help a colleague during a medical procedure (surgery, echography, etc.), the audio/video communication must be set up to ensure a good quality of experience. The problem is that communication channels for telemedicine must be set up by engineers who do not have a "medical eye". And the existing solutions for audio and video quality measurement are not designed to telemedicine applications (they are designed for TV content). That's why the TeleMediQual products line exists. TeleMediQual products enable to measure QoE and QoS for precise medical procedures, thanks to dedicated quality metrics. Note: The term "telemedicine" is a word used for many different medical practices. For us, telemedicine means "a medical procedure performed at one location, with the assistance of a remote medical expert (at another location) who can follow the procedure and provide advices in real time thanks to audio/video communications". |