THE MOBILE HOSPITAL - AN EXPERIMENTAL TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM FOR THE EARLY DETECTION OF DISEASE

To detect early disease, especially lung disease, we created a new tel emedicine system, called the Mobile Hospital. It consists of a satelli te or ground communication system using a large vehicle in which is in stalled a whole-body spiral computerized tomography scanner and a mult imedia telecommunications system. The Mobile Hospital goes to small vi llages and carries out mass screening for early lung disease, especial ly lung cancer. It travelled over 8000 km from May 1996 to March 1997. In this period 6358 persons aged 50-85 years and younger heavy smoker s were screened in the Matsumoto area. As a result, 37.7% of the subje cts were suspected of having various latent lung diseases. The cost of medical treatment for the lung cancers detected by the Mobile Hospita l was 44% of that for a conventional medical care group, and the lengt h of hospital treatment with surgical operation was 30% of that of the conventional group.