By Robert Taylor Doctors and their patients no longer have to be in the same room.
Physicians can now be hundreds, even thousands, of kilometers from the persons they are treating.
Critical information can go from doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital, traveling many kilometers in a few seconds. Telemedicine has become a lifesaver for doctors in rural areas, who regularly encounter a wide variety of illnesses and emergencies. Many of these are things they have been trained to handle, but all too often they are faced, quite suddenly, with a situation beyond the range of their knowledge or experiences that requires immediate attention. Instead of sending patients hundreds of miles to a larger hospital, which would cost money the patient often does not have and could endanger the patient's health, these doctors simply contact HealthNet, a service of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences center in Lubbock, and set up a two-way video link over dedicated telephone lines. Many hundreds of consultations have taken place since HealthNet began operating in June 1990.