TY - JOUR JF - RJMS JO - RJMS VL - 21 IS - 127 PY - 2015 Y1 - 2015/1/01 TI - Conceptual and Practical Evolution of the Virtual Hospital TT - سیر تکاملی بیمارستان مجازی از حیث مفهومی و عملی N2 -  Background: ICT development has led to the emergence of virtual organizations phenomenon. Virtual hospital is one of these virtual organizations which present digital version of services and information of a hospital. In scientific literature, the term “virtual hospital” covers other concepts as well as the concept of a hospital. The study aimed at analyzing conceptual and practical evolution of virtual hospital. Considering these purpose different documents of the 1950s were reviewed and categorized under four conceptual terms. Practically, we related some actions to each term, as well. Methods: This study was conducted as a review of articles collected from PubMed, Web of Sciences and Google Scholar databases. Findings: Definitions of virtual hospital were differed from time to time. There is also different experience of implemented virtual hospitals in different countries. The first virtual hospital refers to the medical digital library to provide telemedicine services, in which then was named a virtual medical university. In the first decade of the 21st century, virtual hospital as a three-dimensional environment based on virtual reality emerged. Of those countries which adopted this technology were Germany, United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, China and Singapore.  Conclusion: By advancing virtual reality techniques and development of Nano-electronics, we will be witnesses of production of advanced “point of care systems" with a kind of interaction between patients and physicians in a way that they feel they are really in a real hospital with possibility of track and care of patients instead real hospitalization SP - 1 EP - 11 AU - Moghaddasi, Hamid AU - Kamkarhaghighi, Mehran AD - Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences KW - Virtual Hospital KW - E-Health KW - Telemedicine UR - http://rjms.iums.ac.ir/article-1-3468-en.html ER -