Clinical applications of renal telemedicine.

In 1994, a telemedicine network was established linking the renal unit at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital to three satellite dialysis centres in South Australia. In the first two and a half years of operation, the telemedicine equipment was used on over 6000 occasions. Interviews were conducted with 18 medical, nursing and allied health staff and dialysis patients. The main finding was that the full range of staff, from surgeons and nephrologists to allied health staff and nurses, were able use the technology successfully for clinical purposes. A second finding was that the technology enabled staff to perform a wide range of clinical procedures, from routine outpatient consultations and monitoring infections to making decisions about retrieval or confirming decisions to operate. A third finding was that telemedicine enabled the renal unit to provide improved services in which teams of staff at the different sites cooperated in ways that were not possible before the telemedicine links became available.