Telemedicine - the practice of telecommunications-supported medicine - is no longer in its experimental stages. Through telecommunications, several high-profile projects are erasing the barriers between patients' problems and their diagnoses by qualified medical experts.
Under the direction of James Logan MD, director of telemedicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, the Oklahoma Medical Information Network (OMIN) will offer radiology, library, and reference services to remote sites via a network that provides real-time or near- real-time video teleconsultation services. Instead of moving patients (or their X-ray images) to a doctor, or vice-versa, the information will be transmitted digitally.
Oklahoma is providing $550,000 to help start the project. One of the anticipated benefits: protection of otherwise shaky rural hospitals, which in turn helps to maintain the viability of the communities they serve.
A telemedicine project with an even wider reach is planned by Health Care International. With $300 million in backing, HCI is one of the largest start-ups ever. The company is building an international medical center in Scotland with links to other facilities around Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, due to open in March, 1994. Patients will be able to visit a clinic in their home country - say, Greece - and have tests performed there. The results - images, chemical values, videotape - may be wired to Scotland for interpretation by experts there, or even further afield, perhaps to an affiliated US teaching hospital.
Telemedicine is also being piloted in some countries where resources are more scarce. SatelLife, an international not-for-profit organization, uses micro-satellite technology to provide health communication and information services in developing countries. An initiative of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, SatelLife uses a "store-and-forward" technique to pass data from one ground station to another via satellite. This unhooks the service from dependence on unreliable and expensive international telecommunications systems. Without SatelLife, for example, a medical researcher in Nairobi would pay $7 to fax a single page of results to the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva.
Nick Beard (100114.1761@compuserve.com), is assistant director of information systems, HCI.
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