Swedish-Lithuanian Cooperation in Development of Telemedicine Applications

The Litmed Project and Beyond

Presentation at:

Owe Svensson, Project Coordinator Region SkåneLars-Olof Almquist, Coordinator TietoEnator Trigon AB

T H E T E L E B A L T C O N F E R E N C E

“Teleworking for Business, Education, Research and e-Commerce”Vilnius, Lithuania, 21-22 October 2002

Sweden

The Location of Region Skåne

Region Skåne and its nearest neighbours - a new perspective

Cooperation since long time

Region Skåne started to establish contacts for cooperation in 1993

Kaunas Medical University Hospital and Municipality Health Care

Kaunas University of Technology

PHARE Primary Health Care Project

The Litmed Project – start 2000

Background of the Litmed Project

Region Skåne’s contacts in Lithuania

St Erik Eye hospital in Stockholm

Telemedicine companies interest

Financed by the Baltic Sea IT-Fund

Partners

Kaunas University of Technology (KUT)

Kaunas Medical University Hospital (KMUH)

Stockholm County Council (SCC) Sankt Erik's Eye hospital AB

Region Skåne (RS) Lund University Hospital

TietoEnator Trigon AB (TE)

Initial step

Purchase of telemedicine workstations

A development contract with the supplier

Carry through examples of telemedicine sessions in the ENT and Eye field.

OtorhinolaryngologyKaunas - Lund

Collaboration between Lund and Kaunas ENT-

departments based on existent relations

Four main applications: Tele-education and consultations on larynx surgery.

Consultations on laryngostroboscopic images.

Support to rehabilitation of children with cochlea implants

(first operation in Lithuania made 1998).

Distant programming of speech processors for cochlea

implants.

OphthalmologyKaunas - Stockholm

The main goal was to create a tele-ophthalmology

network between Kaunas and Stockholm

Main areas tested were:

Tele-consultations

Information exchange

Research

Distance education

Kaunas University of Technology (KUT) and

Euromed AB

KUT was the technical partner in the project

The main activities were: Technical support to project activities

Development and adaptation of software to Lithuanian

environment

Improvement of the user interface

Results

The Telemedicine Support Centre has been

established at Kaunas Univ. of Technology

A medical centre for telemedicine has also been

established at the University of Kaunas

The telemedicine workstation supplier locate further

development to Kaunas.

Several new professional networks has been created

The IT infrastructure at Kaunas Hospital has been

developed through the project

Spinn off..

The telemedicine workstation can be used as a videoconference station for other purposes as for ex.

Biomedical engineering conferences Project meetings for continued projects

Final Project Report

Conference was held 2002-03-15 In Kaunas Distance Education Centre

ISDN

LANr

Live on Internet

Steaming video from www.litmed.net

Final report was published in June 2002

… and beyond

Ongoing discussions with several hospitals in Lithuania to be part of the Lithuanian teleophtalmological network

A new project called Baltic Medweb 2 has been started in Kaunas, based on the results from the Litmed project and the Baltic Medweb project.

The development of the medical software at KUT has continued.

A Litmed II?

A new project application is negotiated with the Swedish

Government

A telepathology network in the Baltic Sea Region

Broad cooperation on Swedish side

Development of IT-support for pathology

Further enhancement of the telemedicine infrastructure

FIN