The quality of healthcare is an important parameter by which to gauge any society's progress.  Indeed it has a prominent effect on any population's quality of life. That is why governments and policy makers in developed countries have spent billions of dollars to build healthcare systems that can provide quality healthcare to the largest portions of the population, and it worked. Now most developed countries have healthcare systems that provide excellent healthcare to the great majority of their populations pretty effectively, though not always cost efficiently. But what does any of this have to do with telemedicine? The answer: a lot.  When deciding whether to allocate resources to develop telemedicine technologies and adopt telemedicine programs, policy makers often compare marginal benefit and marginal cost: the expected benefit from telemedicine programs compared to current systems versus the resources needed to bring about these benefits. Often times, this comparison was not in favor of telemedicine.  When comparing telemedicine to their existing healthcare delivery systems, decision makers in developed countries often decided that the added benefits were not worth the required investment.  As a result, little resources were allocated to the development of more effective and affordable telemedicine solutions and the costs of using existing solutions remained high.

But the populations that would benefit most from the use of telemedicine are not in developed countries with advanced and effective healthcare systems; they are the populations of underdeveloped countries who have limited if any access to good-quality healthcare.  However, because poor countries have very little to spend on developing telemedicine technology and implementing telemedicine programs, they have not had the chance to reap the benefits from it.

Fortunately, however, technologies that were initially developed for use in fields other than healthcare can now be used in telemedicine.  For example, video-conferencing and tele-presence solutions developed for business can just as easily be used in tele-consultations.  It is now easier and cheaper than ever to install a decent tele-consultation setup that would give local patients access to doctors and specialists all over the world.  The effects that this can have on the scope and quality of healthcare provided in underdeveloped countries are beyond measure and maybe even beyond imagination.  Then, why isn't anybody doing anything about it?  I believe that lack of knowledge is certainly one reason but lack of initiative is a more important one.  The practice of telemedicine can only be expanded through people who believe in its potential.  Many people still think that telemedicine is too expensive.  This is no longer the case.  The technology is here and is pretty affordable, but the question remains: who will make use of it?

Editorial Team