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KPN and the University of Amsterdam's Academic Medical Centre (AMC) will together start a pilot project intended to make intensive care (IC) mobile.

Using advanced communications techniques including GPRS and UMTS, KPN will ensure that critical information regarding an IC patient's state of health is continually made available, anywhere. Intensive care doctors will thus be able to monitor a patient's condition in transit. To begin with, this will involve digital transmission of the necessary medical information. In a second phase, the service will be expanded with the addition of live video images of the patient. The objective of the pilot is to make the transfer of IC-patients between hospitals safer through extra remote supervision.

Unique in Europe, the pilot project builds on the advanced digital medical registration and administration systems already in place at the AMC. All patient records as well as data relating to their condition are stored on computer and can be consulted at various locations throughout the IC unit.

The pilot will start in the summer with the wireless transmission of digital information over KPN's GPRS network during intensive care transfer in an ambulance. Further expansion to the project is planned from the beginning of next year with the transmission of live video images over the new UMTS network.