Amateur Radio Digital Mode for Telemedicine During Disaster!

A study published in IEEE Xplore was unique from the point of view of amateur radio: “Study on application of communication in JS8 mode in the amateur radio high frequency band for telemedicine in the event of a major disaster“. I could see a couple of amateur radio callsigns in the author list. Both of them were club calls from Japan as the study was from Japan. They are: Disaster Medical Relief Amateur Radio Club JQ1ZWV and Tokorozawa Amateur Radio Club JH1YVJ. The study evaluated the possibility of using JS8, a new digital mode related to the popular FT8 mode, in the event of a major disaster for telemedicine. JS8 allows free exchange of text data by installing JS8Call on a computer and connecting it to amateur radio capable of digital mode. The study found that this mode can be used even with poor HF band communication facilities and in harsh signal to noise environment. Though the data transmission speed was as low as 6.25 bps, the study showed that it can be applied to telemedicine during disasters if the information to transmitted is carefully examined. I wanted to have a look a the software. But being hosted on an http site, my computer does not give me access, as is usual for any non-https site these days. The study tested the transmissions on the popular 7 MHz amateur radio band.