The first field tests will be held next year

Test Queen of the race in the mountains, the Ultra - Trail du Mont-Blanc, does not gift competitors: 46 hours, runners must browse trafficked 166 kilometres and swallow almost 10,000 metres of altitude in isolated reliefs. In the 2007 Edition, a competitor is presented to medical teams with a slight pain in the chest. One has revealed nothing of. The helicopter rescue have been warned and the man could be evacuated in time.

The episode is not reproduced, but the Institute of training and research in mountain medicine (Ifremmont) criminalizes the anecdote in trophy to defend his research in telemedicine. "This saved life brings the proof of concept", said Pascal Zellner, Doctor urgentist at Chambéry, co-founder of the Institute with an obsession in 2005: deploy the device elsewhere on sports events.

But when he tried to equip three sanctuaries of altitude of the mont Blanc for a suitcase of distance consultation to help caregivers to diagnose disorders at the altitude, the operation has proven more complicated that it would have thought. "Flows were inadequate, inconsistent data and little ergonomic applications", summarizes.

The Ifremmont then grabbed the problem, raises funds from the European Community, forms its teams to medical informatics, and undertakes the development of his own suitcase of interoperable diagnosis. These eight kilos of nomadic technologies in an orange box include a computer with a webcam, a satellite link router, a solar panel and medical sensors (for electrocardiogram, tension, the measurement of arterial oxygen saturation). "The software was written in"open source"so that the files are readable by any computer", explains Pascal Zellner.

Several shelters have been equipped and guards formed the placement of the electrodes and the transmission of the paths directly at the centre 15 or Chamonix hospital. Many tests were performed on this prototype, particularly in the distant expeditions. "South Georgia, while we were in extreme conditions, I could contact a specialist at Chambéry and pass all necessary for a diagnosis of advanced equipment." The interest of such a device for the inhabitants of remote areas would be major.

It is the purpose of the new program of the Ifremmont, called Resamont. "It is this time to design an architecture of teleprocessing of patients in remote areas", says the doctor. With the help of STMicroelectronics and Sensaris, a specialist in the interconnection of mobile objects, biomedical sensors Bluetooth are under development. New cases will be designed to be usable by the patients simply from home.

The first field tests will be held next year. In the meantime, the Ifremmont must take various steps, including administrative. The first was in October with the publication of the decree formalizing the practice of telemedicine: it allows the consultation distance of a patient, medical monitoring, the assistance of a physician by another professional online and, when required by the situation, "the training or the preparation of the patient to the use of the device".

The Ifremmont had not waited to move closer to the Foundation safe mountain, in Courmayeur (Italy), to organize a cross-border network to train mountain doctors and professionals of elevation (guides, escorts, guardians of sanctuary, ski, ski instructors). "Cross travel medicine consultation are for example organised between specialists of hypoxia in France tests and Italian referents in the neurological problems associated with altitude", demonstrates a physician of the Hospital of Aosta, linked to the needs of the operation the Sallanches hospital consultation service and the national school of ski and mountaineering based in Chamonix.

The program also addresses prevention of mountain medicine, as well as the related legal aspects. Finally, he is interested in support of specific pathologies of landforms such as altitude sickness or frostbite monitoring.

"What we put in place conditions extreme will have a direct application in isolated valleys, where elderly people lacked access to a cutting-edge medicine." "It is one of the elements that will allow the maintenance at home," observes Pascal Sellner. Not to mention the savings: hospitalization at home can save more than 25 on hospitalization in the walls.