KYUDAI NEWS KYUSHU UNIVERSITY CAMPUS MAGAZINE Spring 2014 No.25

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Research on a "doctor-to-doctor" telemedicine system for educational purposesThe term "telemedicine" generally calls to mind doctors seeing patients or performing operations by remote control. We are currently engaged in a different type of telemedicine, which is designed to facilitate communication between doctors. Through a doctor-to-doctor telemedicine system, we provide medical practitioners with high-precision video images for medical purposes, thereby supporting educational programs related to new medical technology and various other specialized elds of medicine. Kyushu University began working on various Internet-based projects in collaboration with South Korea around the year 2000. As I was personally interested in these international projects, I paid a visit to the Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering and met the individuals who were leading one of these projects. It then came to my attention that a doctor with whom I had studied abroad was working at Hanyang University, the rst facility in South Korea to be connected to Japan via a high-speed network. I thus gained the opportunity to take part in the project by forming a team of medical professionals. Around that time, Japan launched the "e-Japan Program" under the initiative of then-Prime Minister Koizumi and began remaking itself into an advanced IT nation based on a high-speed communication network. Meanwhile, Japan and South Korea jointly hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup. On this occasion, an ultra-high-speed Internet connection was constructed between Fukuoka and Busan, expanding the network bandwidth between Japan and South Korea by a factor of one thousand. This enabled a breakthrough in the development of telemedicine technology, which requires the transmission of high-quality images. Moreover, a large relay station was constructed in Fukuoka, giving Kyushu University a chance to play a key role in the eld of telemedicine and enhancing the range of our activities.Camera combines endoscopic surgery and telemedicineThe fact that my specialty is endoscopic surgery was very fortuitous in the advancement of telemedicine research. When performing an endoscopic operation, we make several holes of 5mm to 1cm in the abdominal region of the patient into which long surgical instruments are inserted. One instrument has a camera to enable the operation to be performed while images of the inside of the body are being viewed. Thus, we already possessed sufcient resources and skills for taking and displaying images, which are indispensable for a telemedicine system. Another positive coincidence was that the telemedicine project was initiated just when the practical use of endoscopic surgery started. As endoscopic surgical techniques for stomach cancer were becoming established in Japan, many researchers specializing in this eld from Japan and abroad came to Kyushu University to learn this revolutionary technique. I met with one such visitor from National Cancer Center in Seoul and told him about the Japan-South Korea ultra-high-speed Internet line, and he suggested that we do a "live" operation. Supported by his efforts, we were able to transmit a live video of an endoscopic operation we performed for stomach cancer to South Korea. Following this successful event, a number of teleconferences and live demonstrations were conducted and developed into educational material. We also provide our second year medical school undergraduate students with a live lecture program connected to Seoul National Kyudai News No.253Live demonstration of endoscopic surgery At the TEMDECTOP STORY

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