The Telemedicine Information Exchange (TIE)

Abstract

An on-line information service, the Telemedicine Information Exchange TIE , was established to provide a comprehensive source of telemedicine information. The TIE comprised a number of frequently updated, searchable, linked databases, each dealing with an important aspect of telemedicine. These included an extensive bibliography on telemedicine consisting of more than 2000 citations, many with abstracts. There was also a series of topical sections describing current telemedicine projects, products and services, legislation, funding, research activities, and news in the field. The TIE was designed to exploit the features of electronic information storage: hypertext linking between related pieces of information; specialized views technical, legal, and business of the bibliographic database; and usage monitoring to determine which data were most frequently accessed and therefore where any enhancement should be done. The TIE was made available via the World Wide Web, by remote telnet access over the Internet, and via modem. The rapid increase in the usage of the TIE since its introduction in April 1995 indicated that the TIE satisfied a need in the telemedicine community.