Telemedicine and Mobile Surgery in Extreme Conditions: The Ecuadorian Experience -- Telemedicine in the Indian Context: An Overview -- Telehealth: The Backbone of Healthcare Financing -- VII. New Frontiers for Telemedicine Applications -- Telepresence and Telemedicine in Trauma and Emergency Care Management -- Telepresence and Telementoring in Surgery -- Medical Care from Space: Telemedicine -- VIII. New Initiatives in Virtual Education -- The French Language Virtual Medical University -- Creating A Virtual Sanctuary for Scholars -- Epilogue -- Author Information -- Author Index

In 1996, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care. In that report, the IOM Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine found telemedicine is similar in most respects to other technologies for which better evidence of effectiveness is also being demanded. Telemedicine, however, has some special characteristics-shared with information technologies generally-that warrant particular notice from evaluators and decision makers. Since that time, attention to telehealth has continued to grow in both the public and private sectors. Peer-reviewed journals and professional societies are devoted to telehealth, the federal government provides grant funding to promote the use of telehealth, and the private technology industry continues to develop new applications for telehealth. However, barriers remain to the use of telehealth modalities, including issues related to reimbursement, licensure, workforce, and costs. Also, some areas of telehealth have developed a stronger evidence base than others. The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) sponsored the IOM in holding a workshop in Washington, DC, on August 8-9 2012, to examine how the use of telehealth technology can fit into the U.S. health care system. HRSA asked the IOM to focus on the potential for telehealth to serve geographically isolated individuals and extend the reach of scarce resources while also emphasizing the quality and value in the delivery of health care services. This workshop summary discusses the evolution of telehealth since 1996, including the increasing role of the private sector, policies that have promoted or delayed the use of telehealth, and consumer acceptance of telehealth. The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment: Workshop Summary discusses the current evidence base for telehealth, including available data and gaps in data; discuss how technological developments, including mobile telehealth, electronic intensive care units, remote monitoring, social networking, and wearable devices, in conjunction with the push for electronic health records, is changing the delivery of health care in rural and urban environments. This report also summarizes actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can undertake to further the use of telehealth to improve health care outcomes while controlling costs in the current health care environment.

A new addition to the successful telehealth series,Telehealth in the Developing Worldaims to balance the relative lack of published information on successful telehealth solutions in the developing world.

This book represents the most current development on the expanding and changing field of telemedicine and e-health, especially in the developing countries. Many things have changed since the publication of the first book in 2004 (Establishing Telemedicine in Developing Countries: From Inception to Implementation). Telemedicine has become more popular, and still continues to grow. While there are many good books and materials on telemedicine, this publication can be seen at the work of reference for all of those who want to practice telemedicine and e-health, particularly in developing countries. This publication deals with ways to establish telemedicine and e-health system, not only in the developing countries, but also in the developed world. Hopefully, this book will be a guide that reflects the status of telemedicine at the given time. It is dedicated to all future generations of telemedicine and e-health students which include healthcare practitioners, administrators, policy makers, technical professionals and others.

Telemedicineâ€"the use of information and telecommunications technologies to provide and support health care when distance separates the participantsâ€"is receiving increasing attention not only in remote areas where health care access is troublesome but also in urban and suburban locations. Yet the benefits and costs of this blend of medicine and digital technologies must be better demonstrated before today's cautious decision-makers invest significant funds in its development. Telemedicine presents a framework for evaluating patient care applications of telemedicine. The book identifies managerial, technical, policy, legal, and human factors that must be taken into account in evaluating a telemedicine program. The committee reviews previous efforts to establish evaluation frameworks and reports on results from several completed studies of image transmission, consulting from remote locations, and other telemedicine programs. The committee also examines basic elements of an evaluation and considers relevant issues of quality, accessibility, and cost of health care. Telemedicine will be of immediate interest to anyone with interest in the clinical application of telemedicine.

Telemedicine networks to support healthcare workers in resource-limited settings (often for humanitarian purposes) have evolved over the last decade or so in a largely autonomous way. Communication between them has been informal and relatively limited in scope. This situation could be improved by developing a comprehensive approach to the collection and dissemination of information. A recent review identified seven telemedicine networks, each of which had been in operation for at least five years and which provided store-and-forward telemedicine services to doctors in low- and middle-income countries. These networks provide clinically useful services and improved healthcare access. However, like much of telemedicine, the formal evidence for their cost-effectiveness remains weak. Topics of current research interest therefore include the cost-effectiveness of telemedicine in resource-limited settings. Outcomes data (and methods for gathering it) such as patient quality of life following a telemedicine episode, the knowledge-gain of healthcare staff involved in telemedicine, and staff recruitment and retention in rural areas are also of interest. Finally, there is little published information about the performance of these telemedicine networks (and methods for measuring it), about how best to manage them, and about how to share resources between them. A collection of articles reporting the current evidence supporting the use of telemedicine in resource-limited settings would build the evidence base and should provide a focus for future research. It would also serve to raise the profile of this potentially important research field.

This book represents the most current development on the expanding and changing field of telemedicine and e-health, especially in the developing countries. Many things have changed since the publication of the first book in 2004 (""Establishing Telemedicine in Developing Countries: From Inception to Implementation""). Telemedicine has become more popular, and still continues to grow. While there are many good books and materials on telemedicine, this publication can be seen as a work of reference for all of those who want to practice telemedicine and e-health, particularly in developing countr.