Telehealth refers to the delivery of all health-related services and/or health information via telecommunication. Telehealth encompasses prevention of conditions or infirmaties, promotion of medical ability and breakthroughs, as well as well as curative issues - telemedicine. Telehealth expands to all areas of healthcare that involve health provision when a specialist may not be physically present - including robotic carers, networked client monitoring, or patient information services.
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Thanks to advances in video conferencing, tele-presence, and haptic feedback, we no-longer have to be at the same physical location as our doctors, for consultation, surgery, even ward rounds.
$250,000 Ambulance
Better help is on the way for the 30-odd million people who call on EMS every year. Shrinking electronics, wireless proliferation and ?smart? materials from the likes of NASA are set to transform the ambulance into a virtually mobile emergency room.
Large Image Display:Chrysalis (2007): Extracting the Target Organ
 Part three of a four part series taking a look at the French film Chrysalis and the views expressed within on how a telesurgical operation would work. Part three examines the interface technology the surgeon uses and how nearly all of it is capabilities we already have.
Large Image Display:Chrysalis (2007): Preparing for Surgery
 Part four of a four part series taking a look at the French film Chrysalis and the views expressed within on how a telesurgical operation would work. Part four wraps things up, looking at how the film extrapolates the technologies to logically follow.
Large Image Display:Chrysalis (2007): Switching to Scans
 Part two of a four part series taking a look at the French film Chrysalis and the views expressed within on how a telesurgical operation would work. Part two looks at the display technologies used to render the patient on the surgeon's end and compares to technologies we have today.
Hospital Care at Home (11)
Imagine if you could have the same level of specialist care you get in the hospital, at home. Imagine talking to field leaders from all over the world, about your condition, and having them monitor and scan your body whilst you do it. Picture an array of scanners and sensors constantly monitoring your health, and sending alerts to the hospital if anything changes.
Home V Hospital
In the past year in the UK, there has been increasing interest in 'home hospitalisation'. People look after a spouse, or relative at home in preference to having them treated in a hospital.
IPhone, Android Telehealth for Health Professionals (Part 5)
 Part five of this series looks at phone-based telehealth which reaches into the full records and data storage on each patient, kept within the hospital itself, allowing live editing and updating of those central records, via a medical professional, remotely.
Personal blood tester
 Biochip laboratories can perform all the processing a patient might require, speedily, but they cannot extract the blood itself. A Japanese company has developed a self-contained blood sampler and test strip which takes the place of the nurse, and can be performed at home with ease.
Telehealth Ultrasound Imaging
 A diagnostic method which traditionally requires a hospital visit, seems to be on its way out into en situ care. Thanks to IT engineers from Washington University in St. Louis, US, a transportable ultrasound imager small enough to fit in the hand, has come into being.
The Doctor is...At Home?
Welcome to the world of a hospital in your house. In the very near future, this is what it may well be like.
Ubiquitous Lifesigns Monitoring
 Embedding electronics directly into fabrics, and weaving intelligent clothing is quite possible these days. Thus, it is not a great step to envisage clothes which continuously monitor your vital signs, and relay that information to a computer system, also located about your person, or in your house or vehicle.
The Genesis DM is a heath monitor computer designed for long-term telehealth. Weighing in at 0.9kg, it is light enough to be carried by even the most frail individual, and plugs into a variety of larger telehealth monitoring systems.
The LifeShirt is a garment (not necessarily a shirt) developed by VivoMetrics, which monitors tyhe wearer's vital signs. Collecting a continuous stream of respiration flow, heart rate, breathing regularity, sweat production and other key metrics.
Wearable Diagnosis
 Diagnosis of any illnesses, sudden injuries, or deterioration of conditions is something traditionally done in a doctor's clinic or in a hospital. Yet, with the proliferation of technologies to imbed computer components in our clothes and bodies, it is perfectly feasible to slip into your daily health check when you don something from your wardrobe at the start of the day.
Back To TopMaximising Health Care Productivity (2)
Imagine what it would be like for doctors and consultants, to have the need for travel cut right down. Time wasted sitting in traffic, on crowded tube trains, or flying from one end of a country to another. A GP being able to pop to the hospital and back, for a five minute quickie between patients to check on a patient recovering in a ward twelve miles away. Imagine...
Telemedicine slashes hospital stays
By the beginning of 2006, Carlisle Housing Association and the Carlisle and District Primary Care Trust managed to collaborate on a telemedicine system which cut in half the time patients spend in the hospital, and actually increased care.
Telemedicine Tele-abused
There is a firm, which specialises in phone and telehealth services to help relieve the stress of hospitalisation. They provide a telephone/television unit next to the beds of more than 160 NHS trust hospitals in the United Kingdom. They may well be abusing their priviledged position.
Back To TopHealthcare on a Massive Scale (1)
Perhaps one of the greatest potentials of telemedicine is the ability for a single medical practicioner to reach and monitor a large number of widely separated individuals or communities, and bring medicare to parts of the world that lack it, or presently have very little, due to location.
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A patient does not have to be physically present, in order for the highest levels of care to be administered. In the days of hospital superbugs they may well even receive better care, virtually.
An Introduction to: Genetically Personalised Medicine
Genetically personalised medicine - the naescent field of pharmacogenetics - is starting to make its impact felt. This field is part of the hospital in the home phenomenon so vital to long-term immersion use, for the physical shell.
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The sensor web, that ubiquitous mesh of interconnected sensors, network communications, databases and sensory aids that is beginning to pervade the physical world around us, has many facets. One in particular, of immense importance to telehealth, and healthcare website in general, is the interconnected network of sensors and devices for monitoring physical health, and flagging emergencies.
Project Gerhome
 The project, a French initiative, run by the French centre for construction research (CSTB), is designed as telehealth for the elderly. Homes are tripped out with sensors and computer systems that monitor the health and behaviour of the individual, and alert a central depot should anything outside of normal routine occur.
The HOT Helmet, or Heat Observation Technology, is a headpiece developed by Hothead Technologies to monitor the temperature of the head, during use.
Back To TopAugmented Health Infrastructure (4)
Bolted directly onto and indeed merging with the medical sensor web, is the need for the human elements to be brought up to par. Neo-luddites removed from consequence, and a general acceptance, understanding, and accessibility to pervasive healthcare methods for all health professionals.
iPhone Telehealth for Health Professionals
 Since the beginning of 2009, there has been a swift flurry of uptake of increasingly sophisticated health monitoring, reference and diagnostic tools for health professionals, using the iphone systems as a base platform.
Telehealth: Giving Doctors a Medical Library on the Move
 One of the problems with telehealth is, whilst the doctor and the patient can be connected practically anywhere, regardless of where the doctor is, orwhere the patient is, that can cause a potential problem, if the doctor is somewhere where they don't actually have access to diagnosis aids at the time.
Back To TopOne Ambulance = One Hospital (2)
It does not matter the name of the country, or the type of health service run. Wherever there are ambulance services, the ambulance staff are always stretched beyond breaking point. What if you could cut out the annoying trip back to the hospital for many patients? Diagnose the problem there and then, in the back of the vehicle. Many if not most conditions treated successfully, without moving, only the most severe ferried to a larger facility.
An ambulance literally becomes a mobile hospital.
SonixTouch is a portable touch screen system, that can be customised by the clinician, into any display method, and compatible with any general purpose or specific ultrasound medical system. It adapts to process the results from anything.
SpinChip is for lack of a better term, a full blood workup laboratory intended to be taken out into the field by a doctor or a paramedic as standard equipment. It's intended use is to perform a blood diagnosis on the spot, rather than sending it to the hospital lab for processing and return in a few days.
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Tying into the one ambulance equals one hospital paradigm, perhaps the one aspecty of patient care most likely to call an ambulance back to the hospital, is surgery. Opening them up, and moving things about inside. The most intricate, and deadly procedures are always going to be carried out in hospital facilities, however what if you could bring the surgeon to the patient, rather than the other way around?
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Is it possible, to go one step further than a mobile hospital, and include all or the majority of the features a patient would visit the hospital for, in the comfort of their own home?
Telemedicine Helps Monitor Parkinson's Symptoms in Patients
Doctors Kevin Biglan and Ray Dorsey from University of Rochester Medical Center in the US have been conducting tests on whether telemedicine is an appropriate option for getting patients and physicians together, to monitor the development of Parkinson's disease.
Telerehabilitation to treat Physical Disorder
Telerehabilitation - rehabilitation conducted via remote link, as a variation on telepresence, would seem to be a good answer to patient treatmeent availability issues. It is used extensively for mental disorders. Can it be used for physical too?
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Tailoring health care specifically to the individual, for best results and lowest cost. | Applicable Dictionary Entries: | | | MICS |
Toothscan Dental Health Technology
A telehealth device just entering the market at time of writing, offers the chance to perform dental health scans at home, providing a daily record of tooth health to aid a dentist, or perhaps more pertinently, flag up a warning if a tooth is starting to degrade – before the pain sets in.
Back To TopUbiquitous Monitoring (3)
As part of the medical sensor web, sensors to monitor and maintain health could be everywhere: in the clothes we wear, embedded into our skin, even deep inside our bodies. We physically become a part of the medical system, ourselves.
Diagnosing Sugar Levels from Saliva
 A new prototype biochip, using a type of sensor called a plasmonic interferometer, offers a means to check a person's blood sugar levels with a simple swab on the inside of the mouth. No blood drawing necessary.
Telehealth: Wearable Electrocardiograph Using Body Area Network
 Telehealth care and ubiquitous monitoring go hand in hand. Sometimes that leads to the creation of novel technologies. More often, it involves repurposing technologies from several other fields and combining them as one. In the case of the wearable electrocardiograph developed by Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), it's a little of both.
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