In the last years, the evolution of advanced digital telecommunications
techniques, the fall of the costs for many of the information and
communication technologies and the wide spread of Internet have
enabled the development of the so called Information Society. In
this environment, the use of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) means to support medical needs which have
specially had a great influence on the field of e-health. The use of
multimedia systems to support e-health applications and new, highly
sophisticated medical equipments are just two examples of the
advances in this area.
In the actual social and medical context, marked by the rapid
advance of telecommunication technologies which exposes the
telemedicine applications to obsolescence, a policy of global
standardization of all fields related to telemedicine could bring
benefits like cost reductions and long-term investments without fear
of depreciation. Other important advantages that make
standardization completely necessary to guarantee the success of
e-health applications are:
- Interoperability and compatibility, making easier the exchange of
data among heterogeneous sources and facing the problem that most of
the solutions up to now have been developed unfortunately on a
proprietary basis so that it remains difficult and frustrating to
put systems together.
- Public knowledge, fair competition and proper quality of
performance, as the finally recognized standards should be freely
available and continuously updated and upgraded by in charge working
groups.
Ideally, suitable specifications – ITU and otherwise – would be
internationally recognized as appropriate for e-Health applications.
However, a basic consensus between standards development and later
standards implementation is obviously needed. Looking for solutions
along these lines, Q28/16 agreed in January 04 to develop an ITU-T
Standardization Roadmap for Telemedicine. This Roadmap aims at
defining the areas in which open global international standards for
e-health applications are currently needed.
Before identifying these gaps, the Roadmap reviews the present
situation and points out the main trends and future challenges. A
key factor in each of the sections of the Roadmap is to review the
proposed or already existing approaches before suggesting new
solutions. The final version of this Roadmap shall provide the
following:
- How technical, clinical and administrative processes are actually
implemented, analyzing related best practices and former
disappointing solutions and results.
- Describes how the processes are intended to work in the future,
taking into consideration issues as quality, accessibility, cost
effectiveness and patient and clinical acceptability.
- Clarifies the purpose and benefits of available standards,
establishes the criteria to choose the best solution from the
possible options, and provides guidelines for implementing the
selected one.
The current version of the ITU-T Standardization Roadmap for Telemedicine has
been approved (24 November 2006) as Study Group 16 Technical Paper and is freely
downloadable from the
ITU-T Technical Papers and Tutorials page.
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