Introduction to the telemedicine minitrack

As a new discipline, primarily driven by technology, telemedicine is still searching for a coherent research framework. The number of papers submitted for this year's minitrack has significantly increased from last year. However, the quality of submitted work has yet to be improved. Data gathered for submitted papers oftentimes remain unclear and inconclusive. Technology surveyed in some papers has already been outdated. And the evaluation framework proposed by some other papers lacks some adaptation to the new reality of healthcare via telemedicine technology. The three accepted papers has nonetheless proved that telemedicine research could reach a quality equal to that of other disciplines despite of the newness of the field.