Medical Digital Library Services as an Improvement of the Teleconsultation System in the Regional Health Network

Abstract

ICT systems supporting the process of consultation in medicine are of significant importance in today's healthcare and are being deployed as region- or country-wide teleconsultation networks. We are involved in the implementation of such a medical teleconsultation network for the benefit of hospitals in Wielkopolska, Poland. While we believe in huge improvement of the regional healthcare thanks to the deployment of a medical teleconsultation system, we are concerned whether this is enough, especially in the context of a very high expected number of transactions and limited amount of medical competence in certain areas. We therefore introduced the concept of providing a number of services built within the Medical Digital Library as an improvement of the medical teleconsultation system in the Wielkopolska regional health network. In this paper we discuss advantages of implementing a Medical Digital Library in the Wielkopolska health network, basing on our practical experience in digital library deployments.