Japanese experience of telemedicine in oncology.
We started telemedicine projects from 1990 with a telepathology system within Tsukiji Campus of National Cancer Center. In 1994, we connected Tsukiji Campus and Kashiwa Campus by 6 Mbps optical fiber leased line using IP protocol for data transmission, for teleconference, telepathology, and teleradiology projects. We also started connection of regional cancer centers and are now forming a cancer center network of 14 cancer centers. We are at present organizing 130 teleconferences per year with an attendance of more than 16000 people as summary. We have also used a high-resolution image transferring system, such as SHD (2000 pixelsx2000 pixels resolution) system on one side, and an economical telemedicine system using JAVA and a WWW browser (NCC_image) on the other side. We think that providing information is another field of telemedicine. We began the experimental gopher and WWW service in 1993. We are now providing official up-to-date cancer information for patients and healthcare professionals. We are getting more than 400000 hits per month. We are also providing a teleconference video session which is held every week on the Internet using a Real Video system with synchronized slide presentation on the WWW browser. We are also organizing a Cancer Image Reference Database System including DICOM images with viewer software. This paper is a summary of the telemedicine projects performed at the National Cancer Center.
Mizushima
H
H
Cancer Information and Epidemiology Division, National Cancer Center Research Institute, 5-1-1 Tsukiji Chuo-ku, 104-0045, Tokyo, Japan. hmizushi@ncc.go.jp
Uchiyama
E
E
Nagata
H
H
Matsuno
Y
Y
Sekiguchi
R
R
Ohmatsu
H
H
Hojo
F
F
Shimoda
T
T
Wakao
F
F
Shinkai
T
T
Yamaguchi
N
N
Moriyama
N
N
Kakizoe
T
T
Abe
K
K
Terada
M
M
D019058:Community Networks; D016208:Databases, Factual; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007564:Japan; D008495:Medical Oncology / Q000639:trends*; D016730:Program Development; D015397:Program Evaluation; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000639:trends*; D019112:Teleradiology; D014741:Video Recording