Telemedicine

Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information technologies to provide clinical health care at a distance. It helps eliminate distance barriers and can improve access to medical services that would often not be consistently available in distant rural communities. It is also used to save lives in critical care and emergency situations.

Although there were distant precursors to telemedicine, it is essentially a product of 20th century telecommunication and information technologies. These technologies permit communications between patient and medical staff with both convenience and fidelity, as well as the transmission of medical, imaging and health informatics data from one site to another. Early forms of telemedicine achieved with telephone and radio have been supplemented with videotelephony, advanced diagnostic methods supported by distributed client/server applications, and additionally with telemedical devices to support in-home care.

It is also referred to as “telehealth” or “e-health“,  allows health care professionals to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients in remote locations using telecommunications technology. Offer patients in remote locations the ability to access medical expertise efficiently and without travel. It provides more efficient use of limited expert resources who can “examine” patients in multiple locations wherever they are needed without leaving their facility. In developed and developing countries telemedicine offers a reduced cost solution to delivering remote care when and where it is needed without the building and staffing added facilities.