A NEW medical imaging system will give doctors in different hospitals the chance to diagnose illnesses without seeing the patient.
The high-speed network, the first of its kind in Southeast Asia, is designed to transmit and process images of patients taken by sophisticated diagnostic machines.
Using the network, called Magnet, doctors can share ideas to offer a more precise diagnosis.
Under Magnet, 100 medical images, together with data, graphics or even voices, can be transmitted between hospitals in one or two seconds.
To safeguard patients, the information can only be reached by registered users of the network, mainly radiologists and surgeons.
Magnet is the first result of a $2 million project started by the Information Engineering Department of the Chinese University 18 months ago. The expensive optical-fibre link needed for the network's high quality and high capacity transmission is provided by Hong Kong Telecom.