J Med Syst
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Over 50 million people in the United States (about 20% of the population) live in rural areas, but only 9% of the nation's physicians practice in rural communities. It is difficult to recruit and retain rural health care practitioners, partly because of issues relating to professional isolation. ⋯ This paper will explore some of the issues involved in using interactive video (telemedicine) networks to transmit continuing medical education programming from an academic center to multiple rural hospitals. Data from a recent University of Iowa survey of the state's health educators will be presented as one approach to assessing the health care marketplace for the deployment of tele-education services.