Telemedicine: why the delay?

Telemedicine The use of information-based technologies and communications systems to deliver healthcare across geographic distances is termed telemedicine. Indeed, the history of telemedicine is the history of communications technology, specifically the advances made in this field in the second half of the 20th century. The practice of medicine through telecommunications as we know it today was born in the early 1960s when NASA (the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration), sending its first animal and human astronauts into space, was challenged by the problem of how to monitor their health status and provide them with medical care. The tremendous technical progress of the last 40 years has made telemedicine increasingly possible, as evidenced by the yearly twofold increase in the number of active telemedicine programs in the United States since the early 1990s [1]. However, despite the rapid advances and dissemination of information technologies in our daily life, the use of telemedicine remains restricted rather than widely deployed. This can be attributed to various obstacles and concerns, the major one being the yet unanswered question of the cost-effectiveness of telemedicine systems. As telemedicine became more popular in recent years, its varied clinical applications also increased. Today, telemedicine can be used for medical consultations, diagnosis, medical and patient education, and even for the performance of surgical procedures. In recent years the services most used in clinical applications, based on the number of teleconsultations conducted annually, are in the field of psychiatry, cardiology and dermatology [1]. Apart from consultations, the most widely deployed and established telemedical service is teleradiology, which involves the transmission of medical images to the radiologist for interpretation. Another field that has shown rapid growth and potential is in-home medical care and patient monitoring. Telemedicine technology can replace Holter-based monitoring systems [2], and can be used to improve diabetes care by registering and transmitting glucose measurements to the physician [3]. In the field of surgery , telemedicine has been used for some years as intraopera-tive video-conferencing for consultations or medical education. It can be used as a means to screen surgical candidates without them having to travel to the surgical center. And lately, roboti-cally mediated telesurgery has made it possible for surgeons to operate at a considerable distance from the operating room [4,5]. Overall, regardless of the service provided, telemedicine systems are used especially in rural areas as a means of easing the accessibility problem of specialist advice and …