Assessing the Information and C ommunication T echnology I nfrastructures of Shiraz U niversity of M edical S cie nces in order to I mplement the Telemedicine S ystem in 2013

Introduction: As health services and facilities are more centered in the large cities, small towns and villages are somehow deprived of such services. A sound solution to this unbalanced distribution of he alth resources is implementation of telemedicine. As Shiraz University of Medical sciences is the organization providing health services to people in Fars Province, the purpose of this study wa s to examine the IT infrastructure of this university to implem ent telemedicine in Fars Province in 2013. Material s and Method s : T his research was a descriptive , cross - sectional study . The study population included 20 specified centers of Shiraz University of M edical S ciences for the implement ation of teleconsultat ion in Fars P rovince . S ince the study population was limited, sampling was not performed. The means of data collection was the che ck lists based on a collection of world standards (Standards of India, United States, and Australia) . T he resulting data were a nalyzed through descriptive statistical methods , using the SPSS software , version 16 . Results: Our findings showed that 70% of the centers had the desktop PC platform, 100% had the laptop platform, but none of the centers had any portable platforms. Furth ermore, 14% of the investigated centers had the required clinical devices , 70% had display monitors with the maximum resolution , 75% had the leased line communication platform, 35% had optic fibers, and 35% had GPRS communication platform. Conclusion: A cc ording to the present infrastructure, implementing the most preliminary levels of teleconsultation under special condition is possible, but the university is not able to provide services in the other types of telemedicine.