TELECONSULTATIONS – SYNERGY OF MEDICINE AND IT TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

The combination of medical sciences with computer networks and computer telematics creates a wide spectrum of new applications called telemedicine. One of telemedical domains is making digitally represented medical data available to medical technicians and professionals from remote locations. It can improve health care and lower its costs. The application discussed it this article is remote access to patients’ medical documentation, and DICOM [1] images in particular, for consultation purposes.

The paper presents the research done so far by Distributed Systems Research Group (DSRG) in the area of telemedicine. It shows the functional evolution of applications designed and developed by the group. Starting from relatively simple Web-based services through dedicated access and consultation applications, DSRG has created a comprehensive and sophisticated environment called TeleDICOM, allowing participants from the distributed consultation team to diagnose patients in collaboration.

Teleconsultation services, demanding as they are, should be designed with deep knowledge and experience in the area of medical data, distributed systems, computer networks and many others. All these issues have been considered in constructing the applications and discussed in the article.