MEDKOM

MEDKOM was the first application project to test medical communication in the forerunner broadband network VBN (later also called switching broadband network ). The aim was to implement the concept of integrated communication in the field of medicine.

Promoter

The project sponsors were the Deutsche Bundespost, the state of Lower Saxony and the city of Hanover. The driving force was the head of the department for hospitals of the state capital Hanover, Klaus Beste. In 1986, the Nordstadt Hospital in Hanover with the associated ENT clinic, which was five kilometers away, formed the core, which was initially only about the use of video conference technology. The Oststadt Hospital, the Dermatology Clinic and the Tumor Center of the Hannover Medical School were added later. MEDKOM gained worldwide interest not least through the participation of pilot users such as the then head of neurosurgery in the Nordstadt hospital, Professor Madjid Samii, and the head of the tumor center, Professor Hubert Poliwoda, who was the actual initiator of the entire project. Poliwoda in particular provided financial support from the then EC. He networked the hospitals of the state of Lower Saxony by means of a video conference, which he presented several times at CeBit. He was also largely responsible for the introduction of fiber optic technology for these video conferences.

Project progress

In 1986 MEDKOM started the video conference connection between the participating hospitals. The need to include imaging procedures (e.g. computer tomographs) quickly became apparent. Until 1989 all hospitals in the state capital and some clinics in the district were connected to the system. The typical equipment was a broadband private branch exchange, which connected two operating theaters with the chief physician's office and the outpatient department in the ENT clinic, for example, and a fifth extension allowed operations to be watched in the doctors' mess. In 1989 the second phase began, in which, in addition to access to a PAC system (Picture Archiving and Communication), the connection to a hospital information system and a film and image database for training and further education was planned. On the basis of a changer for laser discs, the MEDKOM head office was able to provide up to 100 hours of film or 10 million individual images for retrieval via the network. A video studio was set up at the Hannover Medical School, which produced around 60 medical educational films during the course of the project. In 1992, 17 clinics across Germany with a total of 32 branches were involved. When the MEDKOM project ended in 1994, there were more than 50 terminals in over 30 hospitals. Over 1200 video conferences had recently taken place each year.

In 1994 public funding for the MEDKOM project ran out. The background was the setting of the VBN and the transfer of the applications to the ISDN . This ended one of the largest user projects for video communication, but not the applications. MEDKOM had shown that video communication not only improved the range of medical services, but could also save costs considerably. With ISDN and later also the Internet, the applications paid off even more and the experience gained could be put to use in practice.

swell

• Hubert Poliwoda: The Medkom system. Communication via video conference in medicine . in: Der Onkologe 2/1997 pp. 119–121
• Robert Gaßner: Video communication in medicine. Research accompanying the MEDKOM application project. Final report of the accompanying research for the application project "Medical Communication" (MEDKOM) on behalf of the Deutsche Bundespost Telekom, Directorate Hanover . Workshop report no.15. Berlin: IZT - Institute for Future Studies and Technology Assessment.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ http://www.computerwoche.de/heftarchiv/1994/32/1122876/index.html  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from July 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.