A telemedicine guideline for the practice of teleconsultation.
To establish a guideline for the use of teleconsultation, which is one of the most important applications in telemedicine beeing perfomed very frequently in daily medical practice in almost any field of medicine.


METHODS
The recommendations are based on expert knowledge, because of the lack of evidence based data in the telemedical scientific literature. In addition, scientific articles of the highest level of evidence available published between 1970 and 1999 were reviewed. DEVELOPEMENT AND CONSENUS PROCESS: A guideline draft was prepared using the attributes of clinical practice guidelines developed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences. This draft was reviewed by telemedicine experts and the content of the guideline was approved by 100% group consensus in 5 meetings held between 1997 and 2000 by a panel of members of the Subproject 4 Group of the Global Health Care Application Project of the G8 countries.


CONCLUSIONS
The guideline gives recommendations on all aspects of teleconsultation in any field of medicine and will be updated regularly implementing new evidence.
Asbach
Patrick
P
Department of Trauma Surgery, University of Regensburg, Franz-Josef-Strauss Allee 11, 93053 Regensburg, Germany. patrick.asbach@klinik.uni-regensburg.de
Nerlich
Michael
M
D016494:Computer Security; D014943:Global Health; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D007391:International Cooperation; D015969:National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, U.S., Health and Medicine Division; D009307:National Academy of Sciences, U.S.; D019114:Remote Consultation / Q000592:standards*; D013685:Telecommunications / Q000592:standards*; D014481:United States