A medical monitoring system has a sensor system including a sensor associated with a patient and a remote monitoring unit. The remote, monitoring unit includes a microprocessor in communication with the sensor system, and a portable-monitoring-unit transceiver system in communication with the microprocessor. The portable-monitoring-unit transceiver system has a land-line telephone transceiver and/or a cellular telephone transceiver, and a third-network transceiver such as a paging-network transceiver. A full data set is transmitted over the land-line telephone transceiver or the cellular telephone transceiver when communications links over these transceivers are available, and a reduced data set is transmitted over the third-network transceiver when communications links over the land-line telephone transceiver and the cellular telephone transceiver are not available.Sistema de supervisión médica, que comprende: un sistema sensor (22) para la supervisión de una forma de onda del latido del corazón de un paciente que comprende un sensor asociado a un paciente y una unidad de supervisión remota (24) que comprende un microprocesador (26) comunicado con el sistema sensor (22), y un sistema transceptor de la unidad portátil de supervisión (28) comunicado con el microprocesador (26), comprendiendo el sistema transceptor de la unidad portátil de supervisión (28) por lo menos un transceptor seleccionado de entre el grupo que consiste en un transceptor de una línea telefónica terrestre (44), un transceptor de una red inalámbrica primaria (40), y un transceptor de una red terciaria (36) .
