The knowledge of the patterns and potential causes of artifacts in endographic visualization of spiral CT scans are the basis for interpretation and optimization of this visualization method.

In Germany there are many successful special applications of telemedicine. However, these projects are generally not extendable to the whole nation because of the highly complex German health care system, limited funding, heterogeneous IT standards in ambulatory and hospital care, insufficient official electronic health card use, the different data protection and privacy regulations of the federal and state governments, doubts of physicians and patients as well as unequal costs and benefits for the various persons involved in telemedicine. These problems can be overcome by better legal regulations for a seamless interaction of ambulatory and hospital care, improved IT standards and support of the interoperability of telemedical and other health care IT, adaption of the health care organization, work flow and reimbursement of telemedicine services, better information and education of all persons involved about the necessity and limits of telemedicine. There are no doubts about the benefits of telemedicine but to achieve these advantages for the whole healthcare system in Germany requires much work, time and good will.

Data networks are a basic technology with regard to an appropriate design of the information technology (IT) infrastructure for the hospital. Due to the distributed workflow within the hospital, an integrated Hospital Information System (HIS) is based mostly on a set of network applications facing specific items. Medical communication standards, i.e., HL 7, DICOM, and in the near future the migration towards XML, support the interoperability between the IT subsystems and pave the way to patient information systems with access to unified and complete electronic medical records (EMR). Furthermore, with standardized communication techniques, such as CORBAmed, an object-oriented design of Healthcare applications will be possible in the near future. The intent of this paper is to give an overview of which basic technologies are suitable for building comprehensive, flexible, and reliable hospital networks and which also meet the special demands of the radiology department.

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