Telemedicine in Perspective: Trends and Challenges

Telemedicine is at crossroads after 4 generations of varied applications and prototype implementations. Validated concepts have integrated available technology to handle the basic system components, namely, data transmission, content coding, terminals and instruments, data and information processing, in multiple manners. Medical data exchange has been tested therefore, using a particular technology set up, in a particular scenario. Among the multiple technology evolutions that could be identified as significant trends we have selected four - wireless broadband, noninvasive sensors, emerging multimedia standards, and open source software - which are likely to have an impact on the current telemedicine progression, at functional and economic levels. A description of each technology's main characteristics and drawbacks is presented, as well as the assessment of their potential influence to improve the gap between urban and rural telemedicine, the ergonomics of sensing devices and the cost of implemented prototypes.