Telemedicine in 20 years of CARS

A vision of the development of eHealth and telemedicine by implementation of modern information and communication technologies for the improvement of patient care and health systems has been recommended recently by a European Space Agency working group. For 20 years CAR and CARS has served as a platform for the advancement of the goals of telemedicine. We have analysed the contributions to CAR/CARS in the areas of telemedicine, teleradiology, PACS and telesurgery and compared the results to the number of publications cited in the Medline database. A pronounced increase of contributions in telemedicine between 1994 and 1997 can be attributed to the advent of the internet. In future a real integration of various medical services shall be attained by the creation of a Virtual Euro-Mediterranean Hospital (VEMH).