Want a glance of the future of health care? Take a look at the way the various networks of people about patient care are being connected to one another, and how this new connectivity is being exploited to deliver
medicine to the patient-no matter where he or she may be.
Online doctors offering advice based on normal symptoms (症状) are the most obvious example.
Increasingly, however, remote diagnosis (远程诊断) will be based on real physiological data (生理数据) from
the actual patient. A group from the University of Kentucky has shown that by using personal data assistance
plus a mobile phone, it is perfectly practical to send a patient"s important signs over the telephone. With this
kind of equipment, the cry asking whether there was a doctor in the house could well be a thing of the past.
Other medical technology groups are working on applying telemedicine to rural (countryside) care. And at
least one team wants to use telemedicine as a tool for disaster need-especially after earthquakes. On the whole,
the trend is towards providing global access to medical data and experts" opinions.
But there is one problem. Bandwidth (宽带) is the limiting factor for sending complex (复杂的) medical
pictures around the world-CT photos being one of the biggest bandwidth users. Communication satellites may
be able to deal with the short-term needs during disasters such as earthquakes or wars. But medicine is looking
towards both the second-generation Internet and third-generation mobile phones for the future of remote
medical service.
Doctors have met to discuss computer-based tools for medical diagnosis, training and telemedicine. With
the falling price of broadband communications the new technologies should start a new time when telemedicine
and the sharing of medical information, experts" opinions and diagnosis are common.