An Overview of Telemedicine Technologies for Healthcare Applications

Medical care generally relies on the face-to-face encounter between patients and doctors. In places where face-to-face encounters are not possible, telemedicine technologies are relied upon to link patients to specialist doctors for consultation and to obtain opinion. The telemedicine technologies provide improved health care to the underprivileged in inaccessible areas at reduced cost. Telemedicine also improve quality of health care and more importantly reduce the isolation of specialists, nurses and allied health professionals. This review papers discusses the telemedicine technologies and its history, the communications technologies that are being used. The paper also covers the advantages and benefits of telemedicine. Also the recent advances that are going on in telemedicine in the areas of m-health, Wearable Physiological Monitoring System (WPMS), Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). Finally, the paper concludes with some of the drawbacks or issues of telemedicine technologies.