JITA Editorial Address
Telemedicine is one of the most important and fastest developing technologies of knowledge-based society. However, despite the existence of thousands of telemedical systems, the number of the ones, which offer more than just the ability of reaching the information on physiology, pathology and therapeutic methods, is insufficient. We still lack an appropriate number of interactive applications, that is: ones, which include the elements of diagnostic (telepathology, teleradiology), potentially also the patient supervision or even therapy (teletherapy) operations. The development of such applications, both - offered on the Web and in the form of specialist software and hardware - will influence the ability of telecommunications and IT technologies' mass servicing of patients. The stakes are very high in this case, because the cost of IT infrastructure creation is currently much lower than the cost of creating traditional health care infrastructure. Despite that fact, the possibilities offered by the use of modern IT, telecommunications and multimedia technologies can often bring effects close to the ones expected from costly investments in the improvement of society's health. This is how the most developed countries understand IT revolution. Such high evaluation of new technologies' influence on the quality of life resulted there from many practical implementations of information society's technologies. In consequence, appreciating the importance of technology's direct influence on citizens' life quality, well developed societies undertake investments in search, support and direct development of solutions supporting social life organisation and numerous applications concerning citizen's health. As is well known, all such actions are included in the category called quality of life technologies. Therefore one can cite important economic, technical and moral reasons for undertaking specific actions allowing for the use of applications and telemedical technologies also in Poland and in other countries new EU member states, and for trying to implement them wherever possible and justifiable. The challenge is reflected in the initiatives relating to telemedicine and telepathology development as well as environment monitoring technologies.
The editors of this Journal of the International Telemedicine Academy have experience in that area connected with the successful pioneer project of telemedical application development concerning the senses responsible for communication, i.e. hearing, sight and speech. The characteristic feature of diagnostic-and-rehabilitation services designed and implemented on a grand scale lies in their high interactivity level, which allows for medical screening research without medical personnel (whether physicians or nurses). We are happy that over 3 last years, during the conferences on Telemedicine and Multimedia Communication we organized we were able to exchange experiences with a large group of renowned experts in telemedicine, telepathology and multimedia, IT and telecommunications technologies, representing both the physicians and engineering environments. Just as we expected, it turned out that gathering the experts in both fields at one conference will allow for extremely creative exchange of experiences.
Therefore, we decided to organise this Journal and extend the invitation to you, in a hope that you will honor us with your participation in revealing your experience in the domain of telemedicine theory and applications. We also decided to expand the list of publications in this domain so that the Journal could involve an even greater group of renowned experts in areas included in the interdisciplinary scope of interest of such branches of science and technology as telemedicine and telecommunications.