Ståle Walderhaug
SINTEF ICT, Tromsø, Norway / Department of Computer Science, University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
Conceição Granja
Norwegian Centre for Integrated Care and Telemedicine, University Hospital of North Norway, Tromsø, Norway
Alexander Horsch
Department of Computer Science, University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway / Inst. Med. Statistik und Epidemiologie, Technische Universität München, Germany
Gunnar Hartvigsen
Department of Computer Science, University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway / Norwegian Centre for Integrated Care and Telemedicine, University Hospital of North Norway, Tromsø, Norway
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Published in: SHI 2015, Proceedings from The 13th Scandinavien Conference on Health Informatics, June 15-17, 2015, Tromsø, Norway
Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 115:16, p. 98-101
The growing interest in Arctic areas, both from professionals and tourists, is a challenge for the health care system in areas suffering from extreme weather conditions, long distances and poor communication network coverage. Offering adequate health care services for people who live in these Arctic areas might be very difficult in part of the year. Access to medical services, in particular specialist services, is limited. In cases of emergency such as a large-scale accident, the system is further challenged. This paper discusses major challenges for successful implementation of telemedicine services in Arctic environments, with a special focus on handling accidents. Lessons learned from less challenging regions will be addressed in order to recommend a common set of critical success factors for implementing telemedicine service.
Telehealth; arctic; search and rescue; emergency response; telemedicine; critical success factors for telemedicine.
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