A Unified Multimedia Database System Supporting Tele-Medicine

A unified approach to manage multimedia medical databases in a tele- medicine system is proposed in this paper. In order to manage, search and display patient information more efficiently, we define a patient information package (PIP) as a concise data set of a patient's medical information from each visit. By means of PIPs, both patient-oriented and problem-oriented query strategies, which are most frequently used in daily clinical practice and medical education, can be accommodated. We also provide a unified methodology for accessing various types of patient medical records and design two types of user interfaces, high quality data display and web-based interface, for different medical service purposes. The PIP-based management of databases has been successfully implemented between National Taiwan University (NTUH) and the Chinshan health care center for tele-consultation, tele-diagnosis, and tele- education.