Bulletin Spring‧Summer 1999

province. It also lent its expertise to Tongzhi University in Wuhan in establishing teleconference facilities for teaching. Another extensive teleconference was the first ‘Moving with the Sun', an annual 24- hour global event, organized from 30th June to 1st July 1997 to coincide wit h the reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. Fifteen medical centres of excellence in Asia , Europe, Nort h America, Africa , and Australia were linked up in a live interactive platform held at the Prince o f Wales Hospital. Teleconsultation The faculty's teleconference facilities at the Prince o f Wales Hospital were also used for events of a smaller scale such as sessions with overseas experts for postgraduate training in various medical fields, and case conferences for gainin g second opinion from overseas. Among the latter was a widely reported case of the use of teleconsultation to obtain a second opinion from radiologists i n London about a 13-year-old girl with a rare skeletal condition. It resulted in the establishment of a preliminary diagnosis and the exclusion of differential ones. Teleeducation The faculty is also one of the first to use teleconference in problem-base d teaching. Instead of reorganizing the whole faculty and having teachers of differen t medical disciplines go to a session, the system allows them to teach simply by going up to the nearest video station. One professor can show diagrams, another can show microscopic slides... . It saves time and gives flexibility in organizing the curriculum. Experimental Platforms To find out the feasibilit y of using audio-visual communication to provide health care, the faculty has launched a joint pilot project with a home for the elderly and Shatin Hospital. A l l three places are video-linked. Nurse s from the home communicate w i t h specialists in geriatic care at Shatin Hospital about the physical conditions of their charge. I f anything serious arises, the specialists woul d contact the faculty's staff at the Prince of Wales Hospital. Prof. Hjelm said , ‘In the past, the patient had to come to the hospital. This involved requesting the use of the ambulance, loading the patient on, driving 300 metres, going into Acciden t and Emergency...then everything in reverse. Video-link saves a lot of time and resources.’ Telemedicine has very important implications for patients wit h chronic disorders such as diabetes and hypertension. Rather than having them sit in the waiting rooms of outpatient clinics, nurses can go out in the field and contact these patients and refer them to nurse specialists, physicians, and other personnel higher up the medical ladder i f necessary. Another ongoing experimental platform i s linking up the whol e Clinical Sciences Building at the Prince of Wales Hospital in an audio-visual network so that one part of the building can communicate with any other part by means of video stations. T o r the first time in the world, a hospita l exists both as a real and a virtual hospital. This w i ll be the most extensive telemedicine network i n the world. Hong Kong had a late start but in Chinese University Bulletin Spring • Summer 1999 8