Global Telehealth

Book excerpt: Telehealth -- the delivery of health services and clinical information from a distance -- has reached new levels with the communication revolution of the last decade: consumer videoconferencing, mobile devices, high bandwidth infrastructure and close range wireless sensor networks have made many advances possible in the field. New specialized clinical applications and markets have also emerged. These include tele-homecare, tele-rehabilitation and tele-emergency, surveillance and disaster response, while ideas which once seemed futuristic, such as tele-procedures and tele-surgery, are now seen as being within the realms of possibility. This book contains selected papers from the 2010 Global Telehealth conference, hosted by the Australasian Telehealth Society. They cover a broad spectrum, from successfully completed projects to work in progress. The papers chosen for publication are all deemed to have lasting value, and to capture the international diversity and scope of contemporary telehealth developments. Two aspects which remain elusive in advancing telehealth deployment, both in developed countries and the developing world, are widely accepted evidence for the clinical and economic benefits of telehealth and the development of policy and business modeling drivers which will speed their adoption. The studies presented here exemplify precisely the type of work required to overcome these obstacles and the book will be of interest to all those involved in advancing the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare throughout the world.