Telemedicine services across the Greek-Bulgarian border

Abstract

A virtual private network has been implemented across the Greek-Bulgarian border. The central idea is that people should be able to store a minimum medical emergency data-set (MMEDS) on the network, so that the information is available to treating physicians, irrespective of where they are located and irrespective of their native language. After the first six months, there were 2500 records stored on the network, a number that was increasing by 35 records per day. Patients can use their mobile phone to gain access to their MMEDS. The system recognizes the source of a call and its location and it sends the MMEDS to the caller's mobile phone, in SMS format, in the local language. The costs of the system operation have been very modest and this has prompted a number of corporate sponsors (e.g. mobile telephony providers) to include the project in their social responsibility or charity budgets.