Overview of international telemedicine experiences and internet based health care services. State of art and perspectives

Telemedicine is the next frontier of modern medicine. So far, it has been widely used in the military and civilian fields, as reported and presented in several papers in the international literature. Over the last 10 years, an increasing interest in telemedicine has been developed in many non-military or civilian fields, including medical education and health care services^8-75. In the present overview, we will analyze some general aspects of telemedicine as applied in the military and civilian medical fields, referring different experiences in US, Europe, Italy and in other parts of the World, including Asia^1-71. Furthermore, we will analyze the technical and organizational aspects of the most important applications, in telemedicine, in the following considered fields: 1. post graduate training of physicians and education of patients; 2. hospital-to-hospital networks; 3. community hospitals - third level hospital networks in large suburban areas; 4. home monitoring, telenursing and integrated home health care services; 5. remote teleconsultation and diagnostic imaging transferral; 6. management of patients in long term care facilities; 7. new perspectives. In many different fields of modern medicine, telemedicine technologies have been implemented and significant experiences have been analyzed.