Telerehabilitation at the University of Alberta

We established a telerehabilitation system to link staff at the University of Alberta with clinicians and students located in Two Hills, a rural commu nity approximately 180 km east of Edmonton. From February 1996 to March 199 9, the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine conducted a total of 254 teleheal th sessions, most of which involved participants in the rehabilitation disc ipline. Of these connections, only 11 were unsuccessful owing to technical or telecommunication problems (i.e. 96% were successful). The average durat ion of a session was 1 h 15 min. There were benefits to the Faculty in the areas of clinical supervision of students, clinical consultation, undergrad uate and graduate education as well as professional development. The future benefits of such an initiative will depend on how well we address challeng es pertaining to training, human resource and infrastructure.