State of the Art Telemedicine/Telehealth.

摘要

The symposium was organized into a progressive series of formal presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and a summary plenary session. Workshop participants were assigned on the basis of their respective interest and expertise, and included those who made formal presentations and participated in panel discussions on the selected topics. Reports were derived for the following topics: network organizational models, technology development and application, clinical applications, public health, disease surveillance and personal health, education, and telemedicine diffusion. It is hoped that the symposium's organization, focus, and agenda make it unique and, more importantly, make this report critical to a well-conceived advancement of telemedicine based on the best information available. More specifically, the symposium had several related objectives. The first was to convene an international gathering based on invited position papers prepared and presented by leading experts in the field of telemedicine. A second objective involved examining and assessing the 'state-of-the-art' of telemedicine. Based on these first two objectives, the third objective was to achieve a consensus on the major issues facing the development and diffusion of telemedicine. The fourth and, perhaps most critical, objective was to propose recommendations for research agendas and action plans directed toward moving telemedicine forward in the service of improving health and medical care at regional, national, and international levels.