A Telemedicine Live Demonstration

Summary form only given. The demonstration is based upon the results from a project called "Telemedicine in North Norway." The application demonstrated, teleendoscopy of ear, nose and throat (ENT), involves a video conference unit. This unit has a 384 kbit/s connection, six ISDN B-channels, to a corresponding conference studio in the town of Alta, 2000 km north of Oslo. At that site, endoscopic equipment is integrated to the conference unit, and the general practitioner may examine his patient under conduction of the specialist. The medical expert can view and to a great deal control the examination by way of the bi-directional sound and picture communication and may finally conclude the diagnosis. The method has been evaluated, and it seems like most of the ENT patients applied for specialist consultation, are well suited for remote examination. Similar methods are used in other disciplines as skin diseases, cardiology, pathology and radiology. In 1995 approximately 5000 patients were diagnosed remotely in Norway, most of them with use of teleradiology.