Videoconferencing

	OHSU president, Peter Kohler and Josef Rösch on a live transmission to Europe.

Video teleconferencing has become an important part of the Dotter Institute’s educational efforts. In the early nineties, the Institute used satellite transmission of live cases to conferences in the United States and were pioneers of live-case transmissions across the Pacific Ocean to Japan. Because high cost and difficulty of setup prohibited the wider use of satellite transmissions, the Institute turned to a new high-tech technique – online video teleconferencing. Its cost, which is less than one-tenth of a satellite transmission, allowed the Institute to expand its tele-education program.

Using PictureTel and recently, Polycom units, the Institute has performed 15 tele-workshops with tele-lectures and live-case transmissions to congresses and meetings in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, the Czech Republic, India and Singapore. The Institute also used video teleconferencing for demonstration of cases and discussion from the Czech Republic, and also Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene, to the Oregon Angio Club meetings at the Institute.

	Broadcast of a live transmission of a case in the research lab at OHSU to an audience in Prague.

Presently, the Dotter Institute is expanding its online video teleconferencing, and has started to broaden its network access to interventional divisions of prominent universities and hospitals in Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic. Using funds donated for high-tech education, the Institute purchased several Polycom units, and allocated them to five hospitals in the Czech Republic, and to hospitals in Austria. They will be used for the Prague Interventional Workshop for live-case and lecture transmissions from multiple hospitals, for consultations. They will also be used for pioneering online panel discussions from multiple sites in the United States , Europe and Australia.

The new features of the Polycom units which allow worldwide real-time (live) Internet connections and the ability to store these transmissions in archives to be used for Internet broadcasting. The Institute plans to broadcast proceedings from the 7th Prague Interventional Workshops on the Internet. CME credits will be available for this cyber or archive attendance. The Institute’s teleconferencing work has a future telecongress in sight.