revolutionise the way doctors deliver service.

Remote radiology readings, electronic access to hospital laboratory results as well as on-line health and wellness information, courses and job prospects are just some of the services the Bermuda Hospitals Board will be putting into cyberspace.

The move comes as the BHB looks to the benefits of new emerging communications technologies to help speed patient care and cut costs.

Last week the BHB launched its website www.bermudahospitals.bm and plans to offer specialised training for staff via teleconferencing are not far behind.

Consulting Chief Information Officer with the Bermuda Hospitals Board, Richard Lau also revealed that efforts are underway to better communicate laboratory results to physicians.

This will be done by extending the Hospital's information system to include the offices of physicians.

"We're going to try and pilot that this summer with one physician's office that is very keen,'' he said.

"We need to make sure we have it properly secured,'' he added.

"Our focus is really to supply applications to support our physicians and provide better patient care. The physician needs that information to be able to make his diagnosis. Instead of coming to the hospital to see it, he would have it more on a timely basis.'' In this new information technology age, the BHB are also seriously considering installing tele-radiology.

"Tele-radiology is a mechanism to be able to send images of radiology, for speciality readings abroad when we don't have the specialists that can read the detail,'' Mr Lau said.

Diagnostic readings of X-rays, ultrasounds and MRI's could be handled by the equipment.

"We are evaluating the costs and assessing the reduction in turn-around time of sending the film away,'' Mr. Lau continued.

Currently if specialised readings are required the films must be physically mailed overseas. The new technology could reduce the time from days or even weeks to minutes.

Mr. Lau said that tele-radiology could be up and running at the Hospital within three years.

Already implemented, the BHB's website was brought on-line "quietly'' just last week.

"We are still developing it but our focus has been two-fold,'' Mr. Lau said.

"One has been to provide health and wellness information to the community and we are going to start publishing a lot of the hard brochures that we typically give out,'' he continued.

"We will make them available on the web so we can have more people looking at it and also talk to some of our physicians and care providers and look at some of the links that they find interesting so that people don't have to surf all through the internet to find out where the reputable sites are.'' The BHB will also use the site as a major tool in recruitment. With a shortage of healthcare professionals world-wide, Mr. Lau explained the tremendous benefits of the BHB of having their own website.

"We always find the need to recruit and this is really a mechanism to do that,'' he said. "In the past we had to look at different websites and advertise with them,'' he added.

"This is a lot more cost effective as we control the website's content and design, we can give a lot of information about the hospital.

"We want to be sure people know that we are an acute care hospital and that we are accredited with the Canadian council. We're not like other island hospitals,'' he continued.

Mr. Lau said that Bermuda's small size makes recruitment "really chaellenging''.

"With Bermudianisation we try to hire as many Bermudians as possible,'' he said.

"I think this is also an easy mechanism for us to reach Bermudians outside the Island so that they have a chance to look and see what the hospital is actually doing because a lot of people actually forget that we have a very nice facility here.'' In terms of training Mr. Lau said that BHB staff could look forward to increased offerings as tele-conferencing arrangments were being worked on.

"It's an idea we want to implement to help train our medical staff and keep them up-to-date,'' she said.

"Instead of having the costly way of sending staff overseas we could do it practically in-house,'' he said.

"We already do a lot of that inhouse with the various companies coming in to do these types of services and keep our staff up-to-date.'' High-tech help: BHB's Consulting Chief Information Officer, Richard Lau is researching several high-tech improvements at the hospital.