More info at www.operationalhealth.com

The Australasian Telehealth Society defines telehealth as "enabling health care services and related processes delivered over distance, using information and communication technologies*. While the Australian Department of Health uses the International Organisation for Standardisation definition: ‘use of telecommunication techniques for the purpose of providing telemedicine, medical education, and health education over a distance”.

It is against the backdrop of e-health and electronic patient care records that Craig speaks with Dr Laurie Wilson, formally of the CSIRO and University of Western Sydney. Dr Wilson and I explore what telehealth actually is, the growth and development of Telehealth (telemedicine) in Australia and how his participatory design approach was used in a landmark virtual critical care telehealth project

About my guest:

Laurie Wilson received the PhD degree in Cosmic Ray Physics from the University of Sydney in 1973, and after working in Atmospheric Physics at the University of Oxford and a short Senior Tutorship at the University of Sydney, joined the Ultrasonics Laboratory of the Australian Department of Health, where he gained an international reputation for research in medical ultrasound. After this group transferred into CSIRO he broadened his interest to encompass a range of applications of medical technologies to healthcare.

He has taken leading role in several health-related projects in CSIRO, including image analysis and visualisation, telehealth and home telecare. He coordinated two broadband telehealth reearch projects in Sydney West and Tasmania respectively, which have influenced a number of subsequent telehealth initiatives in Australia. He also set up the ICT Centre's Human Factors group. Since retirement from full time work in April 2008 he has taken up a post-retirement fellowship. In 2008 he founded the Australasian Telehealth Society and is currently its Honorary Secretary. (Laurie Wilson's bio is from CSIRO Staff Profiles website).