Euromed couples HPCN and 3-D visualisation for telemedical diagnosis

Athens, 1-12-1996 Euromed is a European Commission funded three year project. Euromed will collaboratively exploit, combine and support HPCN activities to enhance and standard ise visualisation techniques to be used in telemedicine applications throughout Europe. First, Euromed will create a hierarchical telemedicine network throughout Europe and Ex-Soviet Union countries linking isolated medical sites with specialised clinics and HPCN centres. Second, Euromed will develop a hierarchical telemedical visualisation suite of packages incorporating,superimposing and enhancing presently used image modalities such as CT, MRI, Angiography, PET and SPECT and newer techniques such as Ultrasound diffraction tomography. Third, Euromed will use WWW and its tools to combine the telemedicine network. Phase one strated in January 1996.

Healthcare is a major candidate for improvement in any vision of the kinds of information highways and Information Societies that are now being visualised. The concept of telemedicine captures much of what is developing in terms of technology implementation, especially if it is combined with the growth of the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW).

Telemedicine can offer many benefits such as improved access, reduced isolation, improved quality of care and a reduction of travel costs. In addition,to simply using telecommunications for distance-reducing or time-saving, telemedicine can be combined with High Performance Computing to incorporate a spectrum of medical imaging techniques.

The Euromed project

Telemedicine provides the potential to reduce European geographical disparity to communicate medical practices. However, to include the latest research developments such as diffraction tomography and new advanced imaging techniques requires the use of a variety of High Performance Computing platforms. The Euromed project provides this link via a Meta-center consisting of five European sites which defines and controls horizontal activities in-line with European objectives via three hierarchical infrastructures :

The hierarchical communications network using satellite, Internet and telecommunications networks (e.g. ISDN, ATM) which connects dispersed isolated regions, such as the Greek Islands and Italian mountains, with mainland Europe and the Ex-soviet Union countries.
The hierarchical computing facilities infrastructure which include range of HPC platforms, state-of-the-art workstations and PC's provides heterogeneous computing facilities to every node in the hierarchical communications network.
The hierarchical medical facilities infrastructure consists of specialised clinics, general hospitals and local doctors which can collaborate and facilitate a uniform level of medical practices.

The purpose of Euromed is to make available research, applications and HPC facilities to every hospital within Europe. The benefits of Euromed is to promote the interchange of expertise to proliferate the integration of new technologies into medical institutions. The rationale is to combine national initiatives into European initiatives. The relevance of Euromed to the health community is that:

Every medical institution on the network will have access to the most state-of-the-art visualisation packages and necessary computational power.
Every medical institution will be closely involved in the development of future 3D and 4D packages.
It will promote a European standardisation of visualisation packages.
It will promote HPC experts to work with Medical experts on a European scale.

The awareness and training activities in conjunction with the introduction of advanced innovative technologies in clinical practice may be particularly valuable and beneficial in those dispersed, developing and disadvantaged regional areas where the existing gap with respect to the medical advances is strong and their alignment would be a social factor of crucial importance. For example, a local doctor using a low-cost PC in an isolated Greek Island can now communicate, via the network, leading-edge medical practices with a specialised clinic in Germany who has access to HPC facilities in Italy, to determine a diagnosis.

In the future, the Euromed project aims to expand the network to the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and least favoured isolated regions of the European Community.

The pilot version of Euromed has established a core framework sites which include the HPC centres of NTUA (Greece), University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), University of Calabria (ITALY) and University of Joensuu (Finland). These centres are all connected by the Internet.

Connections between local medical institutions and these national centres is presently achieved by telephone lines. The supporting medical institutions, which number more than 40, include Onassis Cardiac Surgery Centre (Greece), North Karelin Health District (Finland), Offenbach Hospital (Germany), Oncological Institute (Romania), Dutch Cancer Institute (Netherlands) and General Hospital Cosenza ( Italy).

Phase II of the project, will extend this network, using Internet and satellitetechnology, to include a core framework of Ex-Soviet Union sites with partners in Armenia, Russia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.

Phase III of the project concentrates on developing a low cost telemedicine system allowing the Euromed network to be accessible from dispersed isolated regions such as the Greek Islands and Italian Mountains.

In its various forms the HCN provides communication access between all the Euromed partners. The software protocol providing heterogeneous access to all the Euromed sites, is the World Wide Web (WWW).

Athanasia Routzouni, Anna Markou