Framework for Canadian telehealth guidelines: summary of the environmental scan.

A Canadian project (the National Initiative for Telehealth Guidelines) was established to develop telehealth guidelines that would be used by health professionals, by telehealth providers as benchmarks for standards of service and by accrediting agencies for accreditation criteria. An environmental scan was conducted, which focused on organizational, human resource, clinical and technological issues. A literature review, a stakeholder survey (245 mail-outs, 84 complete responses) and 48 key informant interviews were conducted.

Sustainability--the Holy Grail of telehealth?

The sustainability of a telehealth programme is one measure of its success. However, the term 'sustainable telehealth' has almost become an oxymoron. Many telehealth programmes are initiated in good faith and are based upon well founded principles.

Collaboration using Internet for the development of case-based teaching files: report of the Computer and Instrumentation Council Internet Focus Group.

Unlabelled: The Internet and particularly the World-Wide-Web is becoming a useful tool for the nuclear medicine community.

Methods: The Computer and Instrumentation Council of the Society of Nuclear Medicine convened an Internet Focus group to discuss collaboration using the Internet. The prototype application considered was development of case-based teaching files using the World-Wide-Web.

Automated alignment and sizing of myocardial stress and rest scans to three-dimensional normal templates using an image registration algorithm.

Unlabelled: To optimize the interpretation of myocardial SPECT, we developed an automated method for alignment, sizing and quantification of images using three-dimensional reference templates.

Methods: Stress and rest reference templates were built using a hybrid three-dimensional image registration scheme based on principal-axes and simplex-minimization techniques. Normal patient studies were correlated to a common orientation, position and size.