Design and implementation of a telemedicine system in Palestine

The shortage of expert physicians and health-care providers in Palestine ha s created the need for a telemedicine system. The difficulty and the cost o f transfer between Palestinian cities in the current political situation ma kes it important to use such systems. This paper describes the project's pr ogress. The software and hardware required were developed in our laboratori es. The software included modules for the preprocessing, enhancement, manip ulation, compression and decompression of medical images. The hardware incl uded the communication protocols, physical layer interface circuit and sele ction of a suitable medium for communication. In tests a radiograph was tra nsmitted from one computer to another. The second and third phases will be to establish a communication link between Palestinian hospitals at differen t locations and to examine the realtime transfer of medical images.