In 1993-2001 hospitals of Arkhangelsk Region and Regional Clinic of Northern Norway in Tromsø conducted a project with the financial support from the Norwegian Barents Secretariat, University of Tromsø and Troms County. The project was aimed at developing and strengthening collaboration between health care personnel in Arkhangelsk Region and Northern Norway as well as at facilitating access of the region’s population to medical services, sharing competence and knowledge between health workers and establishing a distance learning program for Russian and Norwegian health care personnel. As a result, a Telemedicine Centre has been established at the Regional Hospital of Arkhangelsk, which is closely linked with the Centre for Disaster, Medicine and Air Ambulance Services; health care personnel have become more proficient in distance learning; educational projects involving the Universities of Tromsø and Arkhangelsk as well as colleges in Northern Norway were supported and the ideas for other joint projects have been fostered.
Another example of the fruitful Norwegian-Russian cooperation is the use of telemedicine in the remote areas in Nenets region. The University Hospital of Northern Norway, the Nenets Autonomous District and the Nenets District Hospital launched a project in telemedical cooperation in Karataika settlement, which started in 2017 and will last till 2020. As some villages are located in remote areas, their residents cannot get sufficient medical help. New technologies are aimed at solving this problem. For instance, people working at the Beliy Nos hydrometeorological station got new equipment, which can control the weight, measure the level of oxygen saturation of blood, heart rate, blood pressure, take and transmit electrocardiograms at a distance, and monitor the main blood parameters like cholesterol, hemoglobin level and sugar. Collected information can be transferred to the doctor with the use of a smart phone. The project is mainly financed by the Ministry of Health of Norway with the contribution of both Norwegian and Russian participants.
