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| China is a country of wide area, 9,600,00 km˛, huge population of more than 1,2 billions, and an inadequate telecommunications infrastructure (although improvements are being made rapidly). There is a big difference in the level of development between the coastal areas of the country and rural areas in western China. The health resources are relatively well developed and easily available in the coastal areas while there are serious shortages of medical care and drugs in the poor and rural areas. Patients in rural areas often cannot get good medical care on time. If they can travel to get medical care, they will incur a heavy financial burden.
Tibet, Yunan, Hainan and Jiangxi : are rural provinces in the South and West of China. |
The main objective of the project is to determine the feasibility of using telemedicine techniques to provide medical and health care, and to improve the health of people in rural areas by fully using the medical resources of SMU - Shanghai Medical University, and its affiliated hospitals.
The purpose of the project is
The project is expected to serve as a model for the configuration of telemedicine services in other rural areas of China. The proposed pilot project will be set up as an experimental (pre-operational) network linking SMU and co-operative hospitals in Tibet, Yunan, Hainan and Jiangxi Provinces. The cost-benefit and feasibility of the network will be evaluated and it will provide a model for a large scale deployment of a China Telemedicine Network. There is not a real CTN because of the insufficiency of communication in some rural and remote areas of China.
This project will use modern information and communications technologies to provide medical consultation and help to less developed areas of the economy, solve the difficulty in getting medical care in rural areas, raise the quality and efficiency of health service, improve people's health status, adjust the imbalance in levels of medical care and education available to those in urban and rural areas, and make optimum use of existing resources.
SMU has been involved in the development of telemedicine in China since 1994
At this early stage of the project, no demonstration is expected to be held in Valletta.
The pilot project to be developed in 1998 onwards, will be used by SMU and its affiliated hospitals to provide remote diagnosis, specialist consultation, information services and on-line examinations to those in rural areas. Consultations between medical specialists and professors will take place using videoconferencing techniques as well as simple voice telephony and low speed data communications. Consultation services can be provided by specialists at SMU and the affiliated hospitals, and clinical tele-education and advanced study services can be offered.
Technical details
The pilot project will use Inmarsat mobile earth stations (MES) which can be hand-carried to remote areas with inadequate telecommunications so that local health care personnel can immediately contact regional hospitals for consultation or training. Inmarsat mobile earth stations support high-quality telephone, fax, telex and high speed data (HSD) at 56/64 kbit/s.
Four MESs will be equipped in the project. Three MESs will be installed at No.2 People's Hospital (250 beds) of Tibet Autonomous Region, the county hospitals (about 200 beds) in Yunan and Hainan provinces. One will be installed at the management centre of SMU that already has connected to its affiliated hospitals via the optical fibre and microwave communication facilities. Two videoconferencing units will be installed at county hospital in Jiangxi and also at the management centre of SMU.
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