Logistical aspects of large telemedicine networks. 1: Site directories.

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2003-00-03
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We carried out a survey of the site coordinators in a mature telemedicine network of about 200 sites The site directory contained information about 221 videoconference facilities There were 191 site coordinators in all i e some coordinators were responsible for more than one site Of the 221 sites we were able to contact 87 on first attempt and 155 by the fourth attempt Thus there were 66 sites 30 which were not contactable We asked each site coordinator to describe any videoconference activity that had taken place over the previous five working days Of the contacted 155 sites 78 reported some videoconference activity during the period in question The total reported videoconference activity was 12 800 min during the one week monitoring period that is an estimated 924 h per month The most common categories of work were education or training 511 h and management or administration 225 h which between them accounted for 80 of all reported videoconference activity Fifty of the 155 sites 32 reported that the equipment was not located in an area suitable for patient consultations In addition 20 sites 13 volunteered that their videoconferencing facilities were not in working order at the time of the survey We did not ask this question in the survey so that this result represents a lower bound for the true number of inoperable systems
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