Telerehabilitation at the University of Alberta

We established a telerehabilitation system to link staff at the University of Alberta with clinicians and students located in Two Hills, a rural community approximately 180 km east of Edmonton. From February 1996 to March 1999, the faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine conducted a total of 254 telehealth sessions, most of which involved participants in the rehabilitation discipline. Of these connections, only 11 were unsuccessful owing to technical or telecommunication problems (i.e. 96% were successful). The average duration of a session was 1 h 15 min. There were benefits to the Faculty in the areas of clinical supervision of students, clinical consultation, undergraduate and graduate education as well as professional development. The future benefits of such an initiative will depend on how well we address challenges pertaining to training, human resource and infrastructure.