Paediatric cardiac telemedicine--transmitting echocardiography images in Wales.

We started a telemedicine service for paediatric cardiology work in 2006, enabling transmission of echocardiography images via videoconferencing equipment to the specialist paediatric cardiac department at Cardiff for review and/or diagnosis. The system has been used regularly for a range of paediatric cardiology cases. Despite increasing the transmission bandwidth to 1 Mbit/s the transmission of live echocardiography was still considered to be suboptimum.

Use of videoconferencing in Wales to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, travel costs and time.

In September 2005 a telemedicine service was started to assist multidisciplinary teams in Wales to improve cancer services. In October 2006 and October 2007 users of videoconferencing equipment at one site completed questionnaires. During October 2006 a total of 18,000 km of car travel were avoided, equivalent to 1696 kg of CO(2) emission.