Karolinska building on the success of a SPIDER project

Thanks to support from SPIDER initiated in 2006, the Biomedical Engineering Department (MTA) at Karolinska University Hospital has taken a major step to internationalize telemedicine and e-health activities, and to establish collaboration with emerging regions. Based on the financial support obtained from SPIDER for the "ICT in rural healthcare in Tajikistan" called the TeleMedISTAN project, MTA together with ShifoCom Center in Tajikistan have established a telemedicine testbed and communication links between two rural hospitals and a city hospital in northern Tajikistan. The scope was to provide people-centered communication and exchange of second opinion between rural and city doctors, in order to increase rural knowledge capacity building, and to increase the quality of healthcare services to rural patients. Telemedicine testbed environment established in Tajikistan will further allow evaluation and implementation of new healthcare processes and services provided to rural areas.

Karolinska's vision is clear - to be recognized worldwide as a premier teaching hospital, leading the way in health science and care. MTA in its turn has a vision to provide education, services, and support in biomedical engineering and telemedicine/e-health solutions worldwide where it is necessary with the end result to provide quality healthcare services to the patients.

MTA is working hard to achieve its vision. Since 2006, five large-scale projects were initiated by Karolinska University Hospital in Tajikistan, in cooperation with Medical and Technical Universities from Tajikistan, Germany and Portugal.  The objectives of these projects are to establish education and to build local capacity in biomedical engineering, telemedicine and e-Health subjects and to provide quality assurance in education compliant with the European standards. Successful results shown in the projects so far have inspired the team at Karolinska to extend international cooperation with other Central Asian countries (Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan) and the Russian Federation. These projects are funded by European Union.

Rustam Nabiev, Project Coordinator, R&D Engineer

Karolinska University Hospital