OREANDA-NEWS. September 22, 2011. A Memorandum of Understanding on further development of the national telemedicine network has been signed at the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. The MoU unites the existing telemedicine initiatives of the Ministry of Health Protection of Ukraine, the National Academy of Medical Science of Ukraine, MTS Ukraine, Mr Akhmetov’s Foundation for Development of Ukraine and DTEK, which is an energy division of SCM owned by Mr Akhmetov.

The national telemedicine network was launched in Ukraine in 2009, when MTS Ukraine supported by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and UN representation in Ukraine started a Mobile Medicine project. The goal of the project is to make highly specialized medical assistance more accessible to people living in the regional centres and remote residential settlements of Ukraine with the help of telecommunication technologies.

As of today, during the first stage of the Mobile Medicine project MTS Ukraine company has allocated funds and set up a core of the national telemedicine network, which unites the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, the State Clinical Scientific-Practical Telemedicine Centre in Kiev, Donetsk and Transcarpathian (the town of Uzhgorod) regional hospitals, the National Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery named after N. Amosov and the National Clinical Hospital named after N. Semashko (the city of Simferopol). Currently, the network is being used in the operating mode.

The successful implementation of the project’s first stage proved that even today Ukrainian medicine can use high-tech technologies: transmitting diagnostic data online, arranging advanced interactive consultations of specialists in certain fields and online doctors’ boards, specialists participating in field-related conferences on-the-job.

Cooperation in the form of the public-private partnership and united efforts supported by the current initiatives of Mr Akhmetov’s Foundation for Development of Ukraine and DTEK will help bring the project to a new stage, expand the number of institutions connected to the telemedicine network, provide access to the highly-specialized medical assistance for the medical establishments’ patients and raise the quality of medical assistance by improving diagnostics and consulting assistance. It is planned to connect 9 medical establishments of Kiev, Lvov, Rovno, Ivano-Frankovsk region, Donetsk and Donetsk region by the late 2011.

The Mobile Medicine project supplies hospitals with the ready ‘turn-key’ solution: Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation for Development of Ukraine, DTEK and MTS Ukraine undertake to design the network, commutations and construction of the ‘last mile’ of each junction points and further maintenance of the network. At the same time medical establishments will be provided with the necessary equipment to hold video conference calls, computer equipment, and special software for medical data transmission.