Telemedicine and Telehealth

A new millennium now looks set to bring yet another cultural shock. The information age is bringing a new generation of information scientists, together with the hardware and software technologies they generate, into the field of health care. The advantages of these new technologies associated with medicine are countless. Telehealth can bring health care directly to patients, improve the quality of health care, provide equity of access to health care services and reduce the cost of delivering health care. This book brings together the perspectives of a male British-trained specialist physician who has worked in the British National Health Service and now works in the United States, and a female US family physician who has trained and worked in the United States and United Kingdom. As a result, this book offers a backdrop of private versus nationalised health care systems existing in countries with highly competitive and deregulated telecommunication environments, and looks at a range of models and solutions to make Telehealth work in different health care situations.