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2006
Book Article
Titel
Mobile tele-echography systems - teleinvivo
Titel Supplements
A case study
Abstract
Telemedicine, defined as practice of medicine at a distance, has been performed ever since humans learned to communicate: a messenger carrying over a medical advice from a distant expert to the bed of a patient has been always practicing telemedicine. By definition, therefore, telemedicine does not imply any technological breakthrough. It is however in the present days, with the breathtaking advancement in medicine, information technology, telecommunications, and biomedical sciences, that the term telemedicine emerged as one designating a new health care service, firmly related to the cutting edge of scientific and technological progression in these fields. By minimizing or even eliminating the effect of distance, telemedicine comes to establish new basements for the delivery of health services worldwide. One of the major application areas is the provision of skilled medical care to patients who are in some way isolated from the specialized care they need. This is specially the case of isolated areas (rural regions, remote islands) and of crisis situation areas (ecological disaster, military conflict, etc.). Residents of these areas often have substandard access to specialty health care, primarily because specialist physicians are more likely to be located in areas of concentrated population. Access to these services is only achieved with the use of applications that allow remote expert consultation providing a faster response in emergency and crisis situations. Tele-echography is a telemedicine modality preferred by many for its low-cost and non-invasive characteristics of capturing dynamic images of human body organs in real time. TeleInViVo is an international and intercontinental tele-echography project, which proved in practice that mobile tele-echography could dramatically improve the medical and health care provided to every person worldwide.
Author(s)