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BackgroundAntiretroviral therapy has changed the natural history of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in developed countries, where it has become a chronic disease. This clinical scenario requires a new approach to simplify follow-up appointments and facilitate access to healthcare professionals.MethodologyWe developed a new internet-based home care model covering the entire management of chronic HIV-infected patients. This was called Virtual Hospital. We report the results of a prospective randomised study performed over two years, comparing standard care received by HIV-infected patients with Virtual Hospital care. HIV-infected patients with access to a computer and broadband were randomised to be monitored either through Virtual Hospital (Arm I) or through standard care at the day hospital (Arm II). After one year of follow up, patients switched their care to the other arm. Virtual Hospital offered four main services: Virtual Consultations, Telepharmacy, Virtual Library and Virtual Community. A technical and clinical evaluation of Virtual Hospital was carried out.FindingsOf the 83 randomised patients, 42 were monitored during the first year through Virtual Hospital (Arm I) and 41 through standard care (Arm II). Baseline characteristics of patients were similar in the two arms. The level of technical satisfaction with the virtual system was high: 85% of patients considered that Virtual Hospital improved their access to clinical data and they felt comfortable with the videoconference system. Neither clinical parameters [level of CD4+ T lymphocytes, proportion of patients with an undetectable level of viral load (p = 0.21) and compliance levels >90% (p = 0.58)] nor the evaluation of quality of life or psychological questionnaires changed significantly between the two types of care.ConclusionsVirtual Hospital is a feasible and safe tool for the multidisciplinary home care of chronic HIV patients. Telemedicine should be considered as an appropriate support service for the management of chronic HIV infection.Trial RegistrationClinical-Trials.gov: NCT01117675.

Training and assessment paradigms for laparoscopic surgical skills are evolving from traditional mentortrainee tutorship towards structured, more objective and safer programs. Accreditation of surgeons requires reaching a consensus on metrics and tasks used to assess surgeons' psychomotor skills. Ongoing development of tracking systems and software Solutions has allowed for the expansión of novel training and assessment means in laparoscopy. The current challenge is to adapt and include these systems within training programs, and to exploit their possibilities for evaluation purposes. This paper describes the state of the art in research on measuring and assessing psychomotor laparoscopic skills. It gives an overview on tracking systems as well as on metrics and advanced statistical and machine learning techniques employed for evaluation purposes. The later ones have a potential to be used as an aid in deciding on the surgical competence level, which is an important aspect when accreditation of the surgeons in particular, and patient safety in general, are considered. The prospective of these methods and tools make them complementary means for surgical assessment of motor skills, especially in the early stages of training. Successful examples such as the Fundamentáis of Laparoscopic Surgery should help drive a paradigm change to structured curricula based on objective parameters. These may improve the accreditation of new surgeons, as 1 To whom correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed at Bioengineering and Telemedicine Centre (GBT), ETSI Telecomunicación, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Avda Complutense, 30, 28040, Madrid, Spain. E-mail: ioropesa@gbt.tfo. upm.es. well as optimize their already overloaded training schedules.

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