| Want a glimpse of the future of health
care? Take a look at the way the various networks of people involved in 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 standardized symptoms are the most obvious example. Increasingly, however, remote diagnosis (telemedicine) will be based on real physiological data from the actual patient. A group from the University of Kentucky has shown that by using an off-the-shelf (现成的) PDA (personal data assistance) such as a Palm Pilot plus a mobile phone, it is perfectly feasible to transmit a patient's vital signs over the telephone. With this kind of equipment in a first-aid kit (急救包), 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 care. And at least one team wants to use telemedicine as a tool for disaster response—especially after earthquakes. Overall, the trend is towards providing global access to medical data and expertise. But there is one problem. Bandwidth is the limiting factor for transmitting complex medical images around the world—CT scans being one of the biggest bandwidth consumers. Communications satellites may be able to cope with the short-term needs during disasters such as earthquakes, wars or famines. But medicine is looking towards both the second-generation Internet and third-generation mobile phones for the future of distributed medical intelligence. 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 usher in (迎来) an era when telemedicine and the sharing of medical information, expert opinion and diagnosis are common. |