Addressing digital divide: experiment on tele-medicine applications using broadband wireless system in rural areas

This paper presents the report about a project carried out by Waseda University, KDDl Corporation and the Hatinh community. The project was supported by APT and implemented in Hatinh province of Vietnam. It was aimed to study the use of broadband wireless LAN for implementation of tele-medicine applications in rural hospitals. The paper describes experiments on video transmission, X-ray image transmission and exchange of electronic medical documents. The report includes the results of recent survey about the use of new system and the feedback from users. The paper summarizes the lessons learned from the project and calls for discussion about new applications for tele-medicine.