Can you imagine the ATA meeting’s 100th anniversary? Will there still be an ATA? Will we still be making the distinction between “traditional medicine” and “telemedicine”? One would certainly hope not and we can only speculate on what healthcare will even be like in 2093 (ATA was formed in 1993). But if there was an ATA 2093 what would it look like? Impossible to tell of course but maybe another 100th anniversary meeting has parallels to share.
Tweeter, Twitter, Blog, Bling, LinkedIn, Linkin Park, Facebook, Facetime. Are you part of the social media generation? Do you know the difference between a tweet and a twerk or are you still trying to figure out how chillax made it into Meriam and Webster? Social media options abound but offer to some a rather confusing array of choices. Which one do I join to find my telemedicine colleagues? Where can I get in on the best "conversations" (yes in quotes!) about what’s hot in mHealth? How on earth do social media intersect with telemedicine and is it really something that could benefit me and my program?
It’s often enough just to keep up with what’s happening in your own local area in telemedicine, let alone keeping up with the world! However sometimes it’s easier than others, especially if your husband is French, reads Le Figaro regularly, and then sends you articles to read (although I must admit Google translate often helps with this last step!).
Telemedicine pops up in the most unexpected places! I was fortunate to attend the 4th International Conference on Information Technologies in Biomedicine (ITIB) in Kamień Śląski, Poland (a lovely little town northwest of Krakow which was a seat of knights and noblemen families in the past and where the castle in which St. Jacek was born is located – which is now a quaint conference center and sanatorium) and in addition to image analysis, computer-aided surgery, bioengineering, bioinformatics and signal analysis are 2 sessions dedicated to telemedicine!
It’s impossible to summarize the 2014 American Telemedicine Association meeting for those unable to attend as it was impossible to see the whole thing even for those attending! ATA grows every year and this year was no exception – it was huge and it was exciting!! Believe me when I say I got quite a cardiovascular workout running between sessions and up and down the stairs between the conference rooms and the Exhibit Hall – which was probably a half-mile long and filled with vendors!
Telemedicine, telehealth, e-health, m-health – it’s all healthcare. But where would healthcare be today without informatics? Broadly, healthcare informatics deals with the resources, devices, and methods needed to optimize acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information in health and biomedicine. Imaging Informatics is the study and application of processes of information and communications technology for the acquisition, manipulation, analysis, and distribution of medical image data in particular.
Are you thinking about getting into telemedicine either as a service provider or using a service provider but have no idea what’s available, how to find customers as a service provider, or as a user find a service provider? Wouldn’t it be great if there was somewhere you could go to find out what’s out there and ask all the questions you have?
The inaugural Northern Arizona presentation of the Arizona Telemedicine Program (ATP) and Southwest Telehealth Resource Center (SWTC) telemedicine training conference was a resounding success, with a sellout crowd and nationally recognized speakers representing several high-profile Arizona telehealth programs. The ATP and SWTRC presented the full-day “Arizona Telemedicine Course: Applications, Infrastructure, Reimbursement” at Flagstaff Medical Center on Tuesday, April 1.
For years telemedicine has had a significant barrier – interstate licensure. Clinicians regularly see patients in their offices who live out of state, but when it comes to telemedicine they have for the most part been prohibited from doing this. In fact, it is easier to see an out-of-state patient when they actually leave the country by telemedicine than when they stay home. This might all be finally changing.
Teleradiology has been around for quite a while and is rather established and quite widespread. So what could possibly be new? Surprisingly there is a lot of research still be conducted in teleradiology and at the recent RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) some interesting studies were presented.