The military has been using telemedicine in Croatia and Somalia to help treat the injured and the sick. There are 13 federal agencies and 40 states that are involved in setting up the infrastructure to make telemedicine accessible, cost effective, user-friendly and clinically useful. University and hospital systems such as the Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Southern California, Emory University and Northwest Covenant Medical Center are already using this technology for medical consulting, medical education and prehospital care. Uses for telemedicine vary widely. Industry has begun to use this communication technology on oil rigs and cargo ships.
Injured workers can have treatment initiated while waiting for transportation to a hospital.
This decreases the delay in their acute medical treatment. University hospitals are providing second opinions and continuing medical education to community hospitals as far away as the Middle East. In the future telemedicine may provide the rural hospitals with the subspecialist expertise of a tertiary hospital thus allowing the patient to receive treatment in their local hospital. This not only decreases the patient's cost of traveling but also decreases the amount of time and anxiety waiting for a subspecialist's input. It also allows the rural hospital to increase their bed census.