Bridging the Abridged

Abstract

In this chapter, a comprehensive review of the development of telemedicine in China, with the focus on the establishment of PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications Systems) and image-guided tele-surgery, will be accounted for together with a comparative study in reference to the counterparts in Europe, leading to a framework of a sustainable, scalable, and flexible e-health infrastructure for the future global digital (paper-less) hospital. The study is drawn from the first-hand knowledge gained through the conduction of a 3-year networking project on Telemedicine: Tele-Imaging in Medicine (TIME, 2005-2007) funded by the European Commission under the Asia-link programme. It is the authors’ hope that this chapter resonates with the future prospect of telemedicine by providing the right contents, at the right time and to the right extent, especially when the implementations taking place are in countries with disparate economic development.