Tele-consultation enhanced via session retrieval and session scheduling capabilities

Conventionally adopted medical tele-consultation systems primarily provide an interactive discussion environment for physicians. However, as medical tele-consultation systems are used for healthcare, the manageability and retrieval capabilities are of equal importance to this interactive discussion environment. A novel medical tele-consultation system with session retrieval and session scheduling capabilities is presented in this study. Session retrieval capabilities are addressed in terms of session-replay and session-recovery. The session-replay capability facilitates a replay of an entire session or specific parts of a session according to user selection. This feature is particularly important for maintaining the possibility to review sessions and provide interns with teaching materials. The session-recovery capability provides rapid recovery of a session process for re-connecting and late users to quickly catch up with an on-going session. Additionally, the system makes scheduling reserved sessions in advance possible such that the availability of all physicians can be coordinated; thus, system acceptance increases, physician willingness to cooperate improves, and ultimately, the value of the tele-consultation is magnified.