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Video conferencing and telemedicine tackle today's healthcare challenges

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Video conferencing and telemedicine tackle today's healthcare challenges

May 12, 2006
By:  Alice Osborn

Knowledge is transferred and interactivity is encouraged when video conferencing in the medical field is applied to today's healthcare challenges. In fact, video conferencing and telemedicine work together to ensure that long-distance patients receive quick and accurate diagnoses and consultations no matter how far away the doctor is from the patient. When video conferencing is used with telemedicine, physicians receive cost-effective continuing medical education, rural patients receive advanced care from teaching hospitals, and patients with chronic conditions receive the latest health information.

Telemedicine: past, present and future

The beginnings of telemedicine emerged in the early 1900s when physicians communicated with remote patients in Australia and Canada through two-way radios. By the 1960s, NASA was developing telemedicine for the space program through audio transmissions and later through satellite communication. In the late 1980s, telemedicine emerged when ISDN lines allowed interactive and real-time video conferencing.

The growth of the Internet helped Doctors Without Borders communicate with local doctors and their patients via e-mail in third world countries. The improved technology also assisted WorldClinic, a global telemedicine practice, to give e-mail diagnoses and treatments to scientists working in remote locations or to single-handed sailors sailing around the world. In recent years, telemedicine has grown substantially due to web and streaming media conferencing that transfers medical information to the participating physicians in real-time.

The future of telemedicine will involve the still-developing telesurgery field, which uses a robotic arm to perform the surgery, aided by 3-D images from the surgery site. Most likely in the future, an aging and computer-savvy generation will turn to telemedicine to answer questions about their chronic medical conditions, and they will demand more comprehensive patient education.

Applications for telemedicine

Video conferencing delivers rapid knowledge to physicians, either to save lives or to gain additional medical training. This interactive tool is cost-effective measure since telemedicine decreases the doctor's need to travel, and in a teaching forum, it increases the ratio of students to the teaching physician, which gives more knowledge opportunities to more medical students than through traditional teaching.

Telemedicine can be deployed to patients through real-time video conferencing or through an offline consultation, called store-and forward-imaging. The best solution would be to use both methods so that a physician has the data, images and video before she gives a diagnosis. Telemedicine when coupled with video conferencing is a breakthrough knowledge sharing endeavor that has practical applications for medical staff training, remote site work, and patient education.

  • Distance learning and training applications -- Video conferencing enables medical teaching staff to demonstrate techniques and skills to medical students or to doctors renewing their medical license. Breakthroughs in the medical field are reviewed and discussed in an environment that shares knowledge and builds interactivity.
     
  • Remote site work -- Telehealth solutions can provide medical treatments and techniques for remote populations either living in North Dakota, Costa Rica, or in remote parts of the world. Physicians from large teaching hospitals or medical centers can connect with their remote patients using video conferencing equipment, such as Polycom's MedLink Cart, which delivers video, audio, and data sharing capabilities on a mobile workspace. As the conferencing physicians work on these cases and interact with the local physicians, the medical knowledge increases, so that more patients can be successfully treated and their health improved.
     
  • Advanced knowledge sharing techniques -- Physicians who practice out of large medical centers on both coasts use telehealth video conferencing solutions to share healthcare information with physicians working in other areas of the country. For example, Johns Hopkins doctors in Baltimore, Maryland give lectures on cardiology, oncology, and diabetes to physicians around the world.
     
  • Patient education -- Through video conferencing, the patients with chronic conditions can have their questions answered and be given more extensive medical knowledge via this interactive technology. Sometimes these patients may be seeking a second opinion from a large medical center, or they may be searching for a telehealth solution to explore other treatment options.

Although the telemedicine field has succeeded at greater knowledge transference and interactivity among physicians, medical students, and patients, this field has more room for expansion. By increasing the awareness of telehealth solutions and through patient success stories, video conferencing technologies for telemedicine will become more compact and innovative and will be able to reach more people in more places.

About the Author
Alice Osborn is a successful freelance writer and contributor to Video-Conferencing-Guide.com.  Your definitive guide to everything you need to know about video driven communications, including multi-view video conferencing solutions for business, broadband video phones and personal webcam chat rooms.

Also See:  [ Classroom video conferencing to enhance distance education courses ]
[ The future of video conferencing among businesses and individuals ]
[ Applications of video conferencing technology for work, home & school ]

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