Described herein is a patient monitoring system that includes a body network (16) with at least one sensor (12) that senses physiological information about a patient and a cognitive device (2) for communicating the physiological information to a remote location. The cognitive device includes a cognitive radio (4), a cognitive monitor (10), and a transmitter (8). The cognitive radio (4) checks detected frequency spectra (6) for unused bandwidth and recommends one or more bands on which to transmit clinically relevant information received from the body network (16) to the remote location; the cognitive monitor (10) receives the information from the body network (16), prioritizes the information based at least in part on a set of rules (30), and selects which information to transmit based on the prioritization and the recommended transmission bands; and the transmitter (8) transmits the selected information as a junction of priority over at least one or the recommended transmission bands.