A much more real world example is in Heart medicine. I worked on a system that used ds1's between hospitals. Say you have hospital A which is a major institution and h ou have hospital B which is more remote and has fewer skilled Doctors etc. Using a standard such as Dicom a Dr in Hospital B. can send your cath image to a specialist in Hospital A. That specialist can do a study and determine with the primary Doctor in hospital B. the best course of action. Also, should it be critical your x-rays or cath images have already arrived at Hospital A. while you are in the air being rapidly transported to A from B. The team can already be planning and up o spead on your condition by the time you arrive saving in this case minutes and minutes and seconds count. Your Doctor in B. also can be kept up to speed and have his reco records updated from A s well. Its a very real situation one that Heartlab Inc. helped design and worked really well. Also don't forget that most Major hospitals use ATM even to the desk top. They can provide telemedicine services very easily over the wide area but in many cases these are not over the public IP backbone but rather over their own network. On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Jere Retzer wrote:

Vadim Antonov wrote:

...

I definitely would NOT want to see my doctor over a video link when I need him. The technology is simply not up to providing realistic telepresense, and a lot of diagnostically relevant information is carried by things like smell and touch, and little details. So telemedicine is a poor substitute for having a doctor on site; and should be used only when it is absolutely the only option (i.e. emergency on an airplane, etc).

If you are really ill, this is true but there are always gray areas that go into the decision whether the 'illness' is worth a visit. Physicians often order things for patients they know based upon a phone call or even e-mail if they feel reasonably comfortable. I think that there are lots of situations that a physician would recommend "just keep Johnny home for a couple days, give him plenty of fluids and [fill in the blank] � call me in two days if he isn't feeling better." Having live video of Johnny is a pretty good supplement to voice, or for that matter the receptionist could record the video call for the physician and he could play it back when he has a few minutes. It's potentially even more important with elderly shut-ins, because bringing them in can be difficult and expensive and their immune systems are typically weaker so you should try to minimize their exposure to people with contagious diseases.

Jere