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	Program Details Shriners Hospitals for Children, Intermountain is engaged in a project designed to evaluate the effectiveness of telemedicine/telehealth applications such as live-interactive video-conferencing. The Shrine Telemedicine initiative set out to provide supplemental services by reducing travel distances, time away from work and home for patients and their families as well as the Intermountain clinic staff. Beyond supplementing our outreach clinics we expect telemedicine to enable SHC-Intermountain to reach additional patient populations and provide patient and provider education. Ultimately these services will provide a medium by which Shrine hospitals can easily exchange information.


	In order to determine what modalities best suite Shrine hospital function three technologies have been selected for evaluation in this project: live, interactive video-conferencing, store-and-forward and teleradiology.


	Live, interactive video-conferencing is the real time, two-way transmission of digitized video images between two or more locations. Store-and-forward technology is the transmission of static images or audio-video clips to a remote data storage device, from which they can be retrieved by a medical practitioner for review and consultation at any time, eliminating the need for the simultaneous availability of the consulting parties and reducing transmission costs due to low bandwidth requirements. Teleradiology allows a high-resolution digital scan of a x-ray to be transmitted and viewed remotely. These films can be stored and readily recalled for viewing. Using a film printer, a hard copy can be produced if needed.


	We examine the positive and negative effects of collaborating with existing telemedicine networks, connectivity across state lines and establishing connectivity between various types of hardware and software standards. Beyond evaluation of the technology, we closely examine the clinical effectiveness of telemedicine applications (satisfaction rates, outcome data, etc.).