Abstract
The optical networking system has been expected to be a part of the foundation of information communication in our daily life and commonly known as“Hikari no Michi”. A medical version of“Hikari no Michi”plan aims not just for improvement of the communication environment out of a hospital, but for the system as a basis of application of medical and engineering knowledge in a hospital, however, it has not been put into effect yet. This plan makes an improvement of the work effectiveness by ICT（information and communication technology）and（semi-）automation, and solves shortage of doctors and nurses in short term. Also, there are great hopes that the realization of these technologies；time synchronization and latency control in networking, scalability, bandwidth guarantee and methods for recovering from various kinds of networking error, results in making a medical network more efficient with medical and nursing service inside the hospital and whole community outside the hospital. To support this system, we take an earphone type vital signs monitor and automatic vocal recognition system as practical examples, and attempt to propose the significance of this plan in the medical-engineering and nursing-engineering cooperation fields and the specific direction toward the purpose.
