E-Health services comprise a broad range of healthcare services delivered by using information and communication technology.\r\nIn order to support existing as well as emerging e-Health services over converged next generation network (NGN) architectures,\r\nthere is a need for network QoS control mechanisms that meet the often stringent requirements of such services. In this paper,\r\nwe evaluate the QoS support for e-Health services in the context of the Evolved Packet System (EPS), specified by the Third\r\nGeneration Partnership Project (3GPP) as amulti-access all-IP NGN.We classify heterogeneous e-Health services based on context\r\nand network QoS requirements and propose a mapping to existing 3GPP QoS Class Identifiers (QCIs) that serve as a basis for\r\nthe class-based QoS concept of the EPS. The proposed mapping aims to provide network operators with guidelines for meeting\r\nheterogeneous e-Health service requirements. As an example, we present the QoS requirements for a prototype e-Health service\r\nsupporting tele-consultation between a patient and a doctor and illustrate the use of the proposed mapping to QCIs in standardized\r\nQoS control procedures.
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