Telehealth
The iPhone 4S will be available on October 14, and one expert says Apple's new release "certainly boosts its suitability for healthcare applications." But one team of UC Davis researchers didn't need an upgrade to transform their iPhones into medical-quality imaging and chemical detection devices.
It's hard to overstate the impact Steve Jobs, who died Wednesday at age 56, has had on technology for the past 30 years. In hardware, software, communications and design, Apple's contributions have been incalculable – not least in healthcare.
With the telehealth industry now in its second decade, the number of procedures for which payers will reimburse providers is still a very short list ¬– and it isn’t growing quickly.
Imagine your marching orders are to link networking and telepresence across a wide array of hardware platforms and software applications to enable telemedicine with both voice and visual capabilities as far forward as possible into the remotest battlefield regions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well, that’s only part of what LTC William Geesey and The U.S. Army’s Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4) unit are doing. The pieces already include telesurgery and telebehavioral health services. Geesey spoke with Government Health IT Editor Tom Sullivan about what MC4 has accomplished to date, and what it is looking to achieve in the near future.
Alaska’s telehealth program is marching forward on the back of a device affectionately known as the “turtle.”
It’s not about the technology.
One would think, given the struggles of telemedicine programs to gain a foothold in the healthcare landscape, that advocates would point first to the tools and gadgets that help connect doctors and their patients in different locations.
Health eVillages will provide decision support tools and technology via mobile devices to remote areas of the globe where quality healthcare is in short supply.
The California-based wellness technology company is moving fast with products designed to make telehealth available to everyone.
Sony's MD2GO telemedicine station, which made its debut earlier this year at the HIMSS and ATA conferences, is now being offered to radiologists as a means of improving communications within the hospital – as well as beyond the hospital's walls.
THA Group, a free-standing in-home health company serving coastal Georgia and South Carolina, will partner with Cardiocom to expand its chronic telehealth program for patients with chronic conditions.