EU-TeleInViVo: Three-dimensional Ultrasound Telemedical Workstation

Worldwide, people living in rural and remote areas struggle to access timely, quality medical care. Residents of these areas often have substandard access to specialty healthcare, primarily because specialist physicians are more likely to be located in areas of concentrated population. The European Commission (EC)-funded Telematics Technologies Programme Project, European Union Interactive Visualiser for Volume Data (EU-TeleInViVo), is an applied international and intercontinental telemedicine project, which is proving in practice that telemedicine today can improve dramatically the medical care and healthcare that is provided to every person, anywhere. The EU-TeleInViVo project has set up a transportable telemedicine workstation - PC and telecoms capabilities - integrated in one case with a lightweight, portable ultrasound station. The system developed is low in price and weight, is transportable, non-radiating and supports a very large range of applications varying from gynaecology over pathology to abdominal scans. It is a medical teleconference workstation that is able to provide healthcare service where this is not possible by the usual means, for example, ecological disaster areas, remote rural areas or isolated islands. Since advanced telecoms means are usually not available or are very expensive in such locations, the system has been designed to work over simple, low-bandwidth telephone lines.