Telemedicine: The Next Big Thing?

As billions of dollars are budgeted to reform health care, legislators in Washington are frantically looking for ways in which the money can truly change the broken health care system without too much of an upset to its key constituents: payers, providers, employers and patients. As in most industries, modernization by the (government-sponsored) introduction of technology sounds like the safe choice. Surprisingly, forcing physicians to implement electronic medical records and to share these records via statewide exchanges is facing a daunting practice to practice "docfight." With the unpleasant possibility of an unrealized promise for change, some suggest we turn the light on the other sleeping elephant in the room -- telemedicine. Brush the dust off this misunderstood (and often misused) technology and health care reform may just live up to its promise, in our lifetimes.

Simply defined, telemedicine refers to the delivery of medical care using telecommunications including: phone, email, Internet and other channels. Over the years, the application of telemedicine was interpreted narrowly to mean the use of technology to overcome physical distance. Specifically, it became synonymous with the use of video conferencing to bring the expertise of specialized physicians (who typically reside in urban America and work in large medical centers) into rural areas where such specialties were scarce or absent. While the supporting technologies have evolved, from ISDN lines to dedicated fiber optics, the principal promise (prejudice) of telemedicine remained frozen in time.

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