THE TELEMEDICINE VIRTUAL ORGANISATION

Description

With telemedicine, organizations often found at great distance of each other work together. It is not a matter of course that such collaboration works well. Collaboration measures are tools to obtain good telemedicine collaboration. Empirical research has identified collaboration measures for telemedicine. Purpose: To show how telemedicine collaboration can be made to work well with the aid of collaboration measures. For teleradiology, 17 measures for improved collaboration are identified and for telemedicine remote consultations 10 measures. In spite of teleradiology and remote consultations being rather different applications of telemedicine, we find some similarity in collaboration measures. Telemedicine means work with virtual organizations. Problems with virtual organizations exist. Organizations planning telemedicine, as an ordinary activity rather than just a project run by champions, have a job to do. Not at least when a larger volume is planned. None of the problems with telemedicine collaboration are large enough to prevent effective collaboration. In spite of the similarity in collaboration measures for teleradiology and remote consultations, different telemedicine applications may require somewhat different collaboration measures. For the future of telemedicine, it is considered important that research includes investigations on collaboration for applications not treated here. A knowledge pool should be developed with information about which collaboration measures different applications require. Obtaining the benefits of telemedicine is dependent on implementing the right collaboration measures.