SWEAT: standards applied in a Web based Egyptian asynchronous telemedicine project

The Next Generation Internet (NGI) has been touted by both academic and industry as the conduit to new capabilities in health care, health education and health services by linking hospitals, clinics, practitioners' offices, health professional specialists and universities. This paper introduces a Web based telemedicine project, SWEAT. Teleradiology and teleconsultation are the focus of SWEAT in its phase I. SWEAT is considered an information, consultation and decision support system. The approach presented makes use of client-server architecture based on the new technology of the Internet where clients use an ordinary Web browser to view, send, receive and give/receive consultation on the patient's medical record while the server is responsible for all data flow. The SWEAT viewing station for radiological images provides a fast response for the primary image processing utilities. SWEAT supports the DICOM standard as well as other industrial image formats, such as GIF, to enable clients to view patients' images while working with DICOM or non-DICOM workstations. The aim of SWEAT in its phase II is to increase bandwidth capabilities to access remote resources and to make use of home-developed software for 3D visualization, surgery simulation and data analysis from diagnostic imaging modalities.