Summary
Background:
The training of local clinicians is the best way to raise the standard of medical
knowledge in developing countries. This requires transferring skills, techniques and
resources.
Objectives:
Grid technology opens new perspectives for preparation and follow-up of medical missions
in developing countries as well as support to local medical centers in terms of teleconsulting,
telediagnosis and patient follow-up. Indeed, grids allow to hide the complexity of
handling distributed data in such a way that physicians will be able to access patient
data while ignoring where these data are stored.
Methods:
To meet requirements of a development project of the French NPO Chain of Hope in
China, we propose to deploy a grid-based federation of databases.
First Results and Conclusions:
A first protocol was established for describing the patients’ pathologies and their
pre- and post-surgery states through a web interface in a language-independent way.
This protocol was evaluated by French and Chinese clinicians during medical missions
in the fall of 2003. The first sets of medical patients recorded in the databases
will be used to evaluate grid implementation of services.
Keywords
Telemedicine - ehealth - grids - medical development - internet
