Telemedicine: Design and Policy Solutions
to Health Care Needs
In January 1999, ISLAT sponsored a seminar on engineering, medical,
and legal issues in emerging telemedicine technologies.
The workshop brought together multi-disciplinary experts in the
field to exchange information and to begin weaving together policy
and design development in the area of telemedicine.
The merging of computers, telecommunications, and medicine to
analyze and transmit medical information to improve patient access
and care has created a rapidly emerging technology. The
applications of telemedicine to improve medical care are vast.
They range from sophisticated home health monitoring, to transferring
digital images between specialists to confirm a diagnosis or treatment
plan, to communication between tertiary hospitals and remote hospitals
to provide seamless yet sophisticated medical care. The
goal of telemedicine is to improve medical care while providing
cost savings and other economic efficiencies. Yet there
are significant design, legal, economic, and technological disincentives
to overcome before the promise of telemedicine is realized.
ISLAT launched a project on the legal and policy issues
in telemedicine, bringing together researchers from Illinois
Institute of Technology who were designing
biosensors and telemedicine equipment with legal and policy experts
from Chicago-Kent. At its initial seminar, the speakers
included Atlanta lawyer Phyllis Granade, an expert in legal issues
in telemedicine, and Charles Inlander, president of the Peoples
Medical Society, a consumer health organization. Hassan
Nagib of IITRI described the emerging technologies affecting telemedicine
applications. The discussion addressed how telemedicine
technology can answer current health care dilemmas, such as improved
home health care monitoring. Participants also learned about
how medical licensing, doctor-patient relationships and reimbursement
must change to accommodate telemedicine technology. Background
materials focused on the reimbursement, licensing, and regulatory
aspects of telemedicine.
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