Construction of a regional telementoring network for endoscopic surgery in Japan

This paper introduces a regional telementoring network for endoscopic surgery in Japan. The telecommunication center was established at Osaka University and it has been operational since 1997 using six ISDN B-channels. The network, composed of five remote hospitals, aimed to tele-educate young surgeons in constituent hospitals, and it was applied not only to tele-education in routine endoscopic surgery, but also to telementoring in advanced operations. As the significance of telementoring in surgery has been gradually recognized, several networks following our model are now under consideration in other areas of Japan. Although there remains several problems around wide and general propagation of telesurgery, such as coverage of the expenditure or privacy protection, it will be beneficial to prevent professional isolation to share limited resources of surgical experts, and it is expected to contribute to patients receiving advanced surgical therapies.