Argentina's national telemedicine programme: reasons for a premature failure

In July 1999, the Argentinean government decided to extend the national telemedicine network from eight to 108 hospitals and medical schools. In April 2000, a telemedicine workstation was donated to every hospital, although there was no training, no guidelines and no overall objectives. We have been leading this project since June 2000 as part of the National Information Society Programme, with an initial 50,000 US dollars budget for the first semester. Since then, we have raised funds, deployed a large cooperative network, and developed training, seminars and content. We have also proposed an overall action plan. Nevertheless, the programme in that time has twice suffered a change of government, the budget has changed five times and the priorities have changed three times. At present, the team finds itself with no contract and no political action plan in a national context which is not favourable to information and communications technology projects.