The “International Visiting Doctors Program” of the Li Ka Shing Foundation has generously sponsored seventeen previous national telemedicine symposia with support from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health, PRC, since November 1999. For each symposium, different prestigious international universities were invited to join Shantou University and China Education Television (CETV) in this national event. Participating universities and institutes included Stanford University, Yale University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine, Hospital for Special Surgery of U.S.A., University of Oxford and Cambridge, U.K., Lund University of Sweden, the University of Osaka of Japan, two French institutes, the Institute of Myologie and the Institute Cochin, the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Manitoba and the University of Toronto and its Affiliated St. Michael’s Hospital, Canada.

Each time, the national telemedicine symposium chose a topic of national and international importance as its main theme, and invited leading international experts to deliver lectures, as well as allowing national experts and audience to participate in the question and answer session. Shantou University was the telephone hotline and email center, allowing experts to promptly respond to comments and questions from nation-wide audience. The first 6 symposia were broadcasted throughout China via satellite by CETV. Then the symposia were live-broadcasted on the internet through media streaming technology. Audience can watch the symposia and communicate with the lecturers on line by clicking those links on the web.

Owing to the wide coverage, Shantou University and CETV received many enquiries about diseases and their treatments from the public during and after each transmission of the program, and has helped to advance medical knowledge in China, with the enthusiastic support and participation of the international medical community. The vision of the symposium helps to push the frontiers of medical research and knowledge further out and foster international collaboration.