Telemedicine and medical informatics in the Multimedia Super Corridor: The Malaysian vision

The practice of medicine, with its wide range of environmental conditions and complex dependencies, has long been used as a test bed for various advanced technologies. Telemedicine, as conceptualised within the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) context, is seen as the application of several relatively mature technologies artificial intelligence (Al), multimedia communication and information systems (IS) amongst others so as to benefit a large cross-section of the Malaysian population. We will discuss in general terms the Malaysian vision on the comprehensive MSC telemedicine solution, its functionality and associated operational conditions. In particular, this paper focuses on the conceptualisation of one key telemedical component i.e. the Lifetime Health Plan (LHP) system, which is eventually intended to be a distributed multi-module application for the periodic monitoring and generation of health-care advisories for upwards of 20 million Malaysians.