Usually, there’s no time to read a favorite newspaper over coffee leisurely. Still, to catch up on the news that takes us into the world one fine morning started flipping on the headlines. Then found “The Center for Disease Control” figures that in the United States, yearly there are 40,000 to 45,000 deaths due to lack of proper health care and for want of medical attention, and globally millions of people die.

Can we bring down the number of fatalities?
Certainly!
Thanks to Information Technology that supports us to save lives from miles away.

Yes, I’m speaking about Telemedicine that gives instant access to the expertise, for over more than 50 years telemedicine saved time, money and most importantly lives.

let’s have a walk through the history of telemedicine.

Telemedicine unfolds a fascinating history. In time immemorial African villagers used smoke signals to warn people to stay away from the village in case of an epidemic spread over.

Telemedicine is not a technology or a separate branch of medicine.
Telemedicine is a provision of remote diagnosis and treatment of patients with the help of telecommunications technology.

The prefix Tele originated from a Greek word telos which means distance. Its application came into existence in ancient societies of Europe when a Dutch physician Willem Einthoven has used electrocardiograms for a long distance transfer in 1905. So it can be concluded that the first telemedicine application was in the field of cardiology.
In the early 1900s, the telephone has become a vital tool for medical communication.

During First World War, radios were the means to communicate.
Later in 1924, A Radio News Magazine features a doctor has attended to a patient through a video call.

International Radio Medical Centre (CIRM), with its headquarters in Rome, Italy was set up in 1935, and it assisted over 42,000 patients in its first sixty years of service, making it the largest single organization in the world that used telemedicine to provide healthcare to seafarers.

Telegraphs and telephone have increased the connectivity among people across the world and became a source for medical consultations. Later with the invention of television in the late 1950s, physicians started using television in their clinical settings and the first interactive link was established in Omaha and the Norfolk State Hospital, 112 miles away. The system was used to interact with specialists and general practitioners and to educate and train at the distant site.

In United States telemedicine programs were organized in the late 1950S

Telemedicine is a term coined in the 1970s which mean healing at a distance and was basically for rural health, and the name had first appeared in the medical literature in 1974.

NASA has carried out a telemetry research and development in its manned space-flight program in the 70s where physicians on earth monitored the vital signs like heart rate, respiratory rate and temperature of astronauts in space.
The U.S. and Soviets had cautiously begun a dialog on health and medicine during the Apollo-Soyuz test project in 1975.

Over the period biomedical communication channels became more institutionalized through the Joint Working Group on Space Biology and Medicine. During Armenian earthquake in 1988, there was an international medical cooperation and a basic understanding of each side’s telemedical capabilities.

In 1993 American Telemedicine Association was established as a non-profit organization with its headquarters in Washington, DC.

It is a leading international resource that advocates the promotion of advanced remote medical technologies and interested in bringing professional, ethical and equitable improvement in health care delivery through Telecommunications and information technology. It aims to improve quality, access, equity and affordability of healthcare throughout the world.

A recent survey of teleconsultation activity (excluding teleradiology) in the USA found that over 85,000 teleconsultations were done in 2002, performed by more than 200 programs, in over 30 specialties. Mental health, pediatrics, dermatology, cardiology and orthopedics accounted for almost 60% of these teleconsultations, with approximately 50% using interactive video, the rest prerecorded or non-video technology.

As mobile and broadband services has widespread the world of telemedicine continues to advance.

Developing countries too adopting telemedicine technologies and experiencing the benefits of telemedicine innovations.

Proper emphasis on workflows, response time, data collection, user friendliness, and low sophistication will optimize the results of telemedicine in future.