Will TV White Spaces Increase Telehealth Capability?

Realizing 'totally connected healthcare' is probably the most important step towards providing both high quality and cost effective patient treatment in the future. Home-based sensing, wearable medical devices and tele-consultation will all contribute to providing continuous health monitoring, evaluation and treatment. A major obstacle will be Quality of Service within an already overcrowded frequency spectrum. The unlicensed use of TV White Spaces, frequency bands that act as buffers between licensed Digital Terrestrial Television bands, has been proposed as one approach to helping alleviate the 'spectrum crunch'. UHF TV White Spaces also bring propagation advantages over conventional Wi-Fi potentially realising relatively low-cost broadband in remote areas which will greatly benefit the uptake of rural telehealth. This contribution provides an introduction to the use of TVWS, the evolution of IEEE standards to address its usage and current healthcare-based TVWS developments and challenges.