Telehealth in Indigenous Communities in the Far North: Challenges for Continued Development

This chapter reports on a pilot project for telehealth in Nunavut, Canada’s newest and northernmost territory. Technologically, the Internet plays a peripheral role in Nunavut’s telehealth network, which centers primarily on synchronous communication using videoconferencing technology but also incorporates asynchronous, “store-and-forward” components. However, the Internet is becoming a viable solution for linking remote sites to each other and to specialist services and information sources outside the territory. Indeed, this chapter argues that the Internet can be a vital component in the way health services are delivered in remote northern communities and that its significance is likely to increase as infrastructure and technological issues are resolved.