The telemedicine information exchange: an online resource.

Telemedicine is the use of telecommunications to provide health care services at a distance. It has grown from mostly government-subsidized research initiatives into a fledgling industry. This growth was fueled by decreasing costs of telecommunications and information technologies and fanned by rising health care costs. The telemedicine information exchange (TIE) (http:(/)/tie.telemed.org), developed by the Telemedicine Research Center in Portland, OR, is both a product and a vehicle of this rapid growth. It facilitates collection of telemedicine information from many sources, providing an easy-to-use hypertext format. This article describes the TIE's development, advantages and disadvantages of a web-based online library, and it's codevelopment with a rapidly expanding industry.