Telemedicine

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What Does Telemedicine Mean?

Telemedicine refers to resources, strategies, methods and installations that help doctors or other medical professionals work remotely to consult, diagnose and treat patients. Through major advancements in technology such as wireless networking and cloud computing, efficiency of data storage, complexity of electronic medical records software, etc., telemedicine is becoming a much more feasible aspect of modern medicine.

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Techopedia Explains Telemedicine

In telemedicine, doctors, nurses or technicians may appear through videoconferencing to consult patients. They may operate surgical equipment or other robotic devices from a remote location. They may dictate or send test results from a home office. What all of these have in common is that the concept of telemedicine allows for more versatile medical care and medical work on a virtual level, that is, across physical distance.

Part of the concept behind telemedicine is that it allows doctors to better serve rural communities where doctors’ offices are scarce. Experts point out that elements of the Affordable Care Act and health-care reform would promote the use of telemedicine in the future, to introduce efficiencies in modern health care. Manufacturers are building a range of equipment and services that would support telemedicine in practice as technology-aided methods continue to improve care around the world.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.