单选题Directions:Read the following four texts. Answer the
questions below each text by choosing A, B, C, or D. 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.