Remote tele-education as an alternative to telemedicine aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington

Abstract

A method of basic tele-education as an alternative to telemedicine on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington is described. Aircraft carriers are often deployed for months, with limited medical specialty services. This method was developed to increase access to images by specialists at the medical center where patients would be seen once at port. Radiologic images were imported into Word and PowerPoint with simple windows keyboard commands. Images were then e-mailed to various specialists for consultation. The quality of the attachments for diagnosis was satisfactory to the consultants and replies were received within 24 hours. There was no apparent difference in image quality between Word and PowerPoint and both used comparable memory space. It is concluded that telemedicine, teleconsultation and tele-education may be successfully implemented in remote environments such as carrier operations at sea, using PowerPoint with attachments.