Toward technical interoperability in telemedicine.

For telemedicine to realize the vision of anywhere, anytime access to care, the question of how to create a fully interoperable technical infrastructure must be addressed. After briefly discussing how "technical interoperability" compares with other types of interoperability being addressed in the telemedicine community today, this paper describes reasons for pursuing technical interoperability, presents a proposed framework for realizing technical interoperability, identifies key issues that will need to be addressed if technical interoperability is to be achieved, and suggests a course of action that the telemedicine community might follow to accomplish this goal.