title: New trends in the virtualization of hospitals--tools for global e-Health.
abstract: The development of virtual hospitals and digital medicine helps to bridge the digital divide between different regions of the world and enables equal access to high-level medical care. Pre-operative planning, intra-operative navigation and minimally-invasive surgery require a digital and virtual environment supporting the perception of the physician. As data and computing resources in a virtual hospital are distributed over many sites the concept of the Grid should be integrated with other communication networks and platforms. A promising approach is the implementation of service-oriented architectures for an invisible grid, hiding complexity for both application developers and end-users. Examples of promising medical applications of Grid technology are the real-time 3D-visualization and manipulation of patient data for individualized treatment planning and the creation of distributed intelligent databases of medical images.
authors.affiliation: Surgical Research Unit OP 2000, Robert-Roessle-Klinik and Max-Delbrueck-Centrum, Charité-University Medicine Berlin, Lindenberger Weg 80, D-13125, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Georgi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Graschew
authors.forename: Theo A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Roelofs
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rakowsky
authors.forename: Peter M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Schlag
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Heinzlreiter
authors.forename: Dieter
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kranzlmüller
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Volkert
mesh_terms: D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003628:Database Management Systems; D005103:Expert Systems; D006751:Hospital Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D020407:Internet; D008491:Medical Informatics Applications; D018511:Systems Integration; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014584:User-Computer Interface