Nowadays in Ukraine we face the active implementation of computer and telecommunication technologies in the health care service. First telemedical work-outs appeared in our country in 1970ies. They mostly concerned telemetry of physiological parameters for miners. Today telemedicine is basically developed as teleconsultations and distant learning.

Theoretical elaborations
In 1999 we published the book under the title “Introduction to Telemedicine”, which appeared to be the Ukrainian work, considering theoretical issues of telemedicine. During three years after this we studied the world experience of the use of telemedicine for the health care service, elaborated and implemented our own systems, evaluated the effectiveness of teleconsultations and analyzed the data. The following results were achieved:
- we generalized for the first time theoretical bases of telemedicine;
- clarified Ukrainian and Russian telemedical terminology  and clearly defined more than 200 terms;
- elaborated sample schemes of formation and work of telemedical systems;
- analyzed the effectiveness of the use of telemedicine for traumatology and orthopedics.
The results of our work were described in several articles and three books:
 “Introduction to Telemedicine”, “Telemedicine”, “Clinical Teleconsultations. Giude for Doctors”.

Practical realization
In 1 January 2000 in Donetsk R&D Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics working group “Telemedicine” was founded. On the 25th of January, 2000 we carried out our first teleconsultation: professor M. Nerlich from Regensburg (Germany) consulted the patient with serious pelvis trauma from Donetsk (Ukraine). In 1 January 2001 first in Ukraine Informatics and Telemedicine Department was founded. Since that time we have done 200 teleconsultations (specialists and patients from 32 countries). We have partnership relation with Russia, Norway, Sweden, India.
In 2003 we was found "Ukrainian Journal of Telemedicine and Medical Telematics".

Equipment
Our telemedical workstations consist of PCs (joined as a local network), slide-scanners, digital cameras, printers, web-cameras, as well as leased Internet line (128K).

Technologies
We mainly use next telemedical technologies:
- e-mail (also “second opinion” teleconsultations on the patient’s request );
- professional mailing lists (Orthopod, Orthoforum, L-Trauma, L-Ort, IndiaOrth, RussianSurginet, etc.);
- Internet forums;
- off-line teleconsultation servers ( Intermag, etc.);
- “Regional telemedicine system” (was created by scientific practical center “Medical computer technologies”, Barnaul, Russia);
- ICQ.
- videoconferences, using “NetMeeting”.

We present "Best Practice Models" for telemedicine and eHealth by Department of Informatics and Telemedicine of Donetsk R&D Insitute of Traumatology and Orthopedics. Read...

There are links to a few our publications in english. Read...

Interview with dr.Anton Vladzymyrskyy, Head of Informatics and Telemedicine dep., Regional Telemedicine Director, deputy-editor of "Ukrainian Journal of Telemedicine and Medical Telematics". Read...