<<October 23, 1999>>
Salah H. Mandil, Ph.D.
Director-Advisor on Informatics
World Health Organization
20, Avenue Appia
CH-1211 Geneva 27
SWITZERLAND
+41-22-791-2426 (direct)
+41-22-791-2111
Fax: +41-22-791-4702
mandils@who.ch
Dear Salah:
(1) Many thanks for your msg of 10/4th -- sorry for my belated reply.
(2) I thank you very much for your excellent talk made at
our telemedicine
demo during our highly successful Tampere event in the evening
of August
9th.
(3) I also thank you for your cordial invitation to your well
organized mtg
on International Consultation on TeleHealth, including TeleMedicine,
which is to be held from Wednesday 12 January to Friday 14
January 2000
at your WHO in Geneva.
(4) I would like to remind you that I am not an expert of
telemedicine,
though I am very interested in the application of broadband
Internet to
the telemedicine field.
(5) This is because;
(a) though the broadband Internet is not available in
many
remote/rural areas of developing countries yet, it should
be to
benefit not only telemedicine but also many other fields,
particularly in distance education field,
(b) the availability of broadband Internet would benefit
all three
categories of medical education, consultation and diagnosis,
(c) the combined use of the broadband Internet by telemedicine
and
distance learning would be more cost effective than
its use by
each of them alone,
(d) since it would cost huge amount to implement the
broadband
Internet in the remote/rural areas of developing countries,
we
need to figure out how to finance it, e.g., our Global
Service
Trust Fund (GSTF) project with the Official Development
Assistant
(ODA) fund of G7 countries,
currently, many countries have concentrated
on upgrading
their domestic Internet backbones, but there is
no specific
organization in global scale which takes care of
the
enhancement of the Internet backbones AMONG countries,
especially in the fields of its use by non-governmental
organizations,
(e) the creation of the GSTF would require awareness
of high echelons
of international and domestic governmental agencies
in education
and healthcare,
(f) in order to bring up the awareness of high echelons,
we are now
forming coalitions of interested parties in those fields
in the
major regions of the Asia/Pacific, North, Central and
South
America, Europe and Africa, under the coordination of
the Global
University System (GUS).
The above is the general direction of our Global University
System
project, and I hope that it would be in line of the objectives
of your
WHO Consultation project.
(6) Your proposed agenda of the consultation mtg is very good.
However, reflecting the Item (5) above, I would suggest
that an item on
coalition formation in selected regions may be included in
the agenda.
It will then lead to the community development in each locality
and
region which is the current interest of many funding sources
-- after
all, the Internet is based on the packet-switching technology
which
shares the valuable telecom media -- the more to share it
by the
community members is the better and cost effective. Our
GUS project is
to extend the concept of sharing to KNOWLEDGE SHARING, i.e.,
education/learning.
(7) I would like to attend your mtg very much, but I have
to find out its
air fair.
Wishing you a very good luck to your mtg!!
Best, Tak
**********************************************************************
* Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D., P.E., Chairman, GLOSAS/USA
*
* (GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A.)
*
* Laureate of Lord Perry Award for Excellence in Distance Education
*
* Founder of CAADE
*
* (Consortium for Affordable and Accessible Distance Education)
*
* President Emeritus and V.P. for Technology and Coordination
of *
* Global University System (GUS)
*
* 43-23 Colden Street, Flushing, NY 11355-3998, U.S.A.
*
* Tel: 718-939-0928; Fax: 718-939-0656 (day time only--prefer
email) *
* Email: utsumi@columbia.edu; Tax Exempt ID: 11-2999676
*
* http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/
*
**********************************************************************
Return to: Global University System Late 1999 Correspondence
Web page by Steve McCarty,
World Association for Online Education
President