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From science fiction to telemedicine: the surprising 150-year history of long-range medical treatment

The evolution of telemedicine has kept pace with advances in information and communication technology. Yet, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, telemedicine remained little used. It took the global COVID pandemic to make telemedicine an integral part of modern healthcare. Most of this is consultations via video call – not so far away from what Gernsback envisioned a century, though so far without the robotic hands. What’s next? One likely factor pushing real-world telemedicine to match the dreams of science fiction will be developments in human spaceflight.

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 Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications in Health Care.

On the commonplace side of the spectrum are familiar uses of the telephone for consultations between patients and clinicians and the use of radio to link emergency medical personnel to medical centers. On the other end of the telemedicine spectrum are largely experimental innovations such as telesurgery in which a surgeon receives visual and tactile information to guide robotic instruments to perform surgery at a distant site. In between these two ends of the spectrum lie an array of video, audio, and data transmission technologies and applications. Some, such as relatively expensive interactive video conferencing, allow clinicians to see, hear, examine, question, and counsel distant patients for "real-time" diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.

Articles of Interest

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A Pandemic Benefit: The Expansion of Telemedicine

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Coronavirus and the Future of Telemedicine

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How Telemedicine Is Transforming Health Care

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Is COVID-19 the Tipping Point for Telemedicine?

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Telemedicine Can Change Care for the Better — With the Right Rules

Health care policy experts say pandemic-era rules that promoted telemedicine should be made permanent to protect gains in quality of care and greater access for millions of patients. Experts caution that making the rules permanent should be done in a way that does not jeopardize in-person practices.

Telemedicine for healthcare: Capabilities, features, barriers, and applications

Telemedicine has improved the capacity of healthcare providers to take care of many people without physically being there. Furthermore, now that it has proved its worth, it will be around for a long time. Although introductory video conferencing brought many providers to telehealth, the new wave of telemedicine technologies would have much more to offer.

The Promise and Perils of Virtual House Calls

With digital technology that can bring distant experts as close as your smartphone, telemedicine is on the rise. Now comes the tricky part.

Resources

5 Surprising Ways In Which Telemedicine Is Revolutionizing Healthcare

“Telemedicine is the natural evolution of healthcare in the digital world,” American Telemedicine Association. Telemedicine empowers the caregivers to remotely interact with their patients, which greatly improves both the efficiency and affordability of healthcare. Today patients, doctors and caregivers have learned to accept telemedicine (often called ‘telehealth’ or ‘connected health’) as one of many ways of delivering care.

American Telemedicine Association

As the only organization completely focused on advancing telehealth, the ATA is committed to ensuring that everyone has access to safe, affordable, and appropriate care when and where they need it, enabling the system to do more good for more people.

Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare

Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare provides excellent peer reviewed coverage of developments in telemedicine and e-health and is now widely recognised as the leading journal in its field.

Telemedicine.com

We are worldwide Telemedicine experts, with over 20 years' experience in every aspect and phase of conceiving, creating, sales, installing, training and supporting Telemedicine projects throughout the globe.

GlobalMed

GlobalMed, a privately held telemedicine company headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, is the leader of telemedicine companies in telehealth hardware and software R&D, design, engineering, manufacture and support. Our team of telemedicine software developers and engineers work closely with scientific and medical professionals–from concept to application–to understand and translate unmet needs into next-generation integrated telemedicine tools that are unsurpassed in quality, affordability and flexibility.

PagerHealth

At Pager, we believe that a superior consumer experience leads to better decisions, better outcomes and healthier lives. We created Pager to transform the way that consumers interact with their healthcare.

Telehealth and Medicine Today

Telehealth and Medicine Today (TMT), is an open access online, international peer review journal where multidisciplinary thought leaders, practitioners, and future society stakeholders converge to address strategic, medical, technical, legal, policy, economic, and social aspects of a new health and technology sector.

Telemedicine and e-Health

Telemedicine and e-Health is the leading international peer-reviewed journal covering the full spectrum of advances and clinical applications of telemedicine and management of electronic health records. It places special emphasis on the outcome and impact of telemedicine on the quality, cost effectiveness, and access to healthcare.

United Telehealth Services

United Telehealth approaches telehealth as a people business. Success requires leaders who know both the clinical and technological aspects of the program. Working with an experienced telehealth partner offers the best solution to reduce risk, accelerate implementation, and achieve rapid and sustainable ROI.