The Joint Working Group is made up of representatives from Federal departments and agencies that have a substantial interest in telemedicine. A current list of participants is attached in Appendix A. JWGT members are involved in several different aspects of telemedicine, each member agency bringing unique expertise to the table. Box 1 provides a brief overview of each agency's telemedicine focus. The JWGT meets approximately twice a month. These meetings provide an opportunity for information exchange, agenda setting, and decision making.
Subgroups meet as needed.
Increasingly, the Federal government's telemedicine activities involve a partnership with the private sector to achieve its objectives. The Working Group is committed to hearing from experts from the private sector throughout its deliberations to gain the widest range of expertise possible. The JWGT meetings have featured presentations on emerging telemedicine issues from the Council on Competitiveness, the Center for Public Service Communications, Federation of State Medical Licensing Boards, the American Medical Association, the Institute of Medicine, the American Telemedicine Association, the Council of the State Boards of Nursing, and Abt Associates, which conducted the first national survey of rural telemedicine projects. D. WORK PLAN OF THE JWGT At its inception in 1995, the diverse membership of the JWGT brought different levels of telemedicine expertise to the table. The committee has worked to educate its members through both distributed material and presentations at meetings from both public and private sector groups that specialize in this field.