A survey of Norwegian telemedicine.

To get an overview of Norwegian telemedicine, a questionnaire was sent to the contact persons of telemedicine programmes. There was an 83% response rate from 102 telemedicine programmes; there were 66 active research projects. Several larger networks had recently started operation, probably as a result of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs' plan of action on information and communication technology in health care. Twenty-one programmes involved primary care or home care. Few programmes were using telemedicine to bridge established divisions of service responsibility or to make connections to institutions abroad. There were three large national research programmes in which telemedicine played an important role. Research projects were evaluating the economic, organizational and sociological aspects of telemedicine, as well as the medical. The oldest telemedicine activities were in northern Norway.