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[edit] What do we mean by “telemedicine”?
“Telemedicine”, “TeleHealth”, “Tele-Care”, “Health Telematics”, “eHealth”, “Medical Informatics” or simply “ICT for health”? The terms for describing the same phenomenon are extensive. One thing is the wording, another is content. Although the terminologies for “telemedicine” have changed over the years, NST has chosen to keep the term “telemedicine” in its name. The way technologies are developing and becoming integrated in health care at large, “telemedicine” encompass a broad range of issues.
The Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine (NST), has been using the following definition: "Telemedicine is the investigation, monitoring and management of patients and the education of patients and staff using systems which allow ready access to expert advice and patient information no matter where the patient or relevant information is located" (European Health Telematics research programme Advanced Informatics in Medicine, 1991).
Telemedicine (‘Tele’ in Greek means ‘distant’) literarily means medicine practiced over a distance. It is an aspect of health informatics involved with the exchange of clinical information via interaction between health professionals and their clients using information systems such that the barrier of physical contact is eliminated. Telemedicine, therefore, primarily involves networking appropriate actors with defined relations in order to administer health care irrespective of their distance from themselves. However, telemedicine should not be confused with Telehealth or e-Health, which, in both cases, deal with both clinical and non-clinical information. One of the major merits of telemedicine is the networking of health care professionals, enabling knowledge sharing (input and output), extensive research and international collaborations for better health care delivery worldwide.
Telemedicine is the use of information and communications technology to provide health care services to individuals who are some distance from the health care provider. Various branches of telemedicine include teleconsultation, teleradiology, telepathology etc. It is believed that the efficiency, equitable distribution and effectiveness of health care delivery would improve with the implementation of telemedicine.
Areas of interest in telemedicine include generation of an accessible database of health care providers in a certain location at a given instance including their qualifications in order to empower the consumers/clients, online prescription of medications, patient-friendly online consultations and ethical issues that may arise from the use of telemedicine e.g. delaying referral of a client due to reliance on teleconsultation.
Also, continued medical education via information system networks can be offered to health professionals to keep them abreast of current advances in the health care industry.
Telemedicine, as is the case for other new technology, is faced with the problem of acceptability especially in the developing world.Also, due to inadequate infrastructure for telecommunications, the advantages of telemedicine may not be available in some locations. Another issue is the trustworthiness of medical/health-related information received via the internet as implementation of incorrect medical advice may lead to disastrous consequences.
