Topic 1

Welcome and thank you for your attention to this e-learning. As a consequence of technological development in combination with healthcare, telemedicine emerged. Telemedicine is becoming more and more important in the future of healthcare

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Why this E-learning?

Greece has a peculiar geography that creates an increased need for medical staff. Telemedicine is an important means to solve this problem. Field research showed that students in Heraklion, Crete, are not yet familiar with the term ‘telemedicine’. This e-learning is intended to change this.

 What is telemedicine?

The World Health Organization (WHO) has referred telemedicine as "healing from a distance." The telemedicine software is used to provide clinical services to the patients from any remote location.

Telemedicine would be considered as the most important technology as it makes it possible to treat patients effectively at a low cost. Today, it may seem to be a novel approach, but very soon, telemedicine software would be commonly used by healthcare professionals.

Nowadays in Greece, Vodafone has implemented a telemedicine program in 2006. It is located in 100 remote locations on the mainland and on islands in Greece. The Vodafone network is used to send examination or test results to specialists in another location. Also, it has the ability to create an electronic medical record. Vodafone also provides telemedicine training for health care professionals (Vodafone, 2018).

The e-learning consists of six sections. It is intended that one section per week be completed. The following topics are covered:

Lesson 1: Introduction

Lesson 2: Benefits and drawbacks of telemedicine  

Lesson 3: Telemedicine history and current situation in Greece

Lesson 4: Types of telemedicine

Lesson 5: Telemedicine devices

Lesson 6: The future of telemedicine

Each week will offer a range of text information, videos and scientific articles. At the end of each section, there are ‘check yourself’ questions to check if you understood the information correctly.

This video gives you an impression of how telemedicine is used

We hope that this e-learning has added value to your medical career. 

If you have any questions or feedback you can contact Laura van Weelde; lauravanweelde@gmail.com. Thank you for participating