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TTC 2003, Tromso
TTC 2003, Tromso
8th International Conference on the Medical Aspects of Telemedicine, Tromsø, Norway, 15-17 September 2003
 
15 October 2003
In one of Europe’s most remote and northern cities, Tromsø, up on the rim of the Arctic Circle, a conference was recently held on the subject of Telemedicine. The remote venue was most appropriate, symbolising the application of Telemedicine for providing healthcare in remote regions, and also because the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine is located in Tromsø
 
The topics covered at this international conference were broad, spanning normal healthcare using modern information technology – eHealth, to remote monitoring and diagnostics – Telemedicine. Despite the remote location, participants came from all corners of the globe, from countries on all continents to share their experiences and learn from each other in this rapidly expanding and challenging domain. Most interestingly, the experts demonstrated that although Telemedicine is on the forefront of medical, technical and communications technologies, it has surprisingly practical and useful applications in the developing and under-developed world as well.  
 
For the developed world other issues, such as legal aspects, data privacy, interoperability and standardisation play a significant role and were widely discussed at the conference. Although the technology for eHealth and Telemedicine already exists, investment and implementation is hampered without adequately dealing with these issues. Bottom-up applications, solutions, and test cases were presented, but it was clear that without Top-down provision of guidelines and interoperability standards, progress would be slow and much effort could be wasted.
The usefulness of eHealth and Telemedicine for the citizen is not always clear to the layman: For example, speakers illustrated how an electronic health record, accessible anywhere at any time could help improve diagnostics, reduce costs, reduce waiting times, increase speed of finding and applying correct treatment, and in the end, save lives and improve the health of the citizen.
 
 
Participation of the TM-Alliance
 
Members of the Telemedicine Alliance from ESTEC also participated at this conference and presented important papers on a couple of ‘hot’ topics: (1) Electronic Cards in Citizen Health Care and The Urgency for Concerted Action , and (2) Data Privacy and its Impact on Implementing Cross-border Healthcare .
 
 
 


More information
Other TM EventsTTC 2003 TromsoPresentation on Electronic CardsPresentation on Data Privacy
 
 
 
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