MRTP – A Novel Real-time Protocol for Patient-Doctor Online Meetings and Monitoring

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a novel Voice over IP (VoIP) protocol that carries real-time voice and medical data in the same stream while preserving good quality of service (QoS) for online medical care. The work deliberates the reasons for the choice of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). The proposed medical real-time protocol (MRTP) is designed to be compatible with the existing Real Time Protocol (RTP) and has advanced features for medical data transmission. The MRTP leverages the real-time performance due to less overhead i.e., less delays. A major challenge is that some medical data is life-critical i.e., losses may cause harm. Hence, reliability and satisfactory QoS are crucial. A major result is the decrease in average-delay by around 74% compared to concurrently utilizing RTP for the audio part and TCP-connections (sockets) for the same medical data.