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The breakthrough is your mobile phone, the house call of tomorrow," says Dr. Jay Sanders, a protege of Dr. Bird, referring to the possibility of sending images from a high-tech personal digital assistant device.

The breakthrough is your mobile phone, the house call of tomorrow," says Dr. Jay Sanders, a protege of Dr. Bird, referring to the possibility of sending images from a high-tech personal digital assistant device.

"For over a decade now, health care experts have been promoting telemedicine, or the use of satellite technology, video conferencing and data transfer through phones and the Internet, to connect doctors to patients in far-flung locales. But are doctors ready for this form of technology?"

Please read this news item and add a thoughtful comment that shows how this article helps you think differently about the Case Study for 2010

This article deals with how telemedicine was used following the earthquake that occurred in Haiti in order to provide medical care to patents and individuals. The stakeholders in this scenario include the patients and doctors in Haiti and the doctors/hospitals in the U.S. They are able to use satellite technology and wireless internet, in order to bridge the gap between both areas and provide people with access to medical care. Satellite technology is used to communicate between doctors in the U.S with clinics in Haiti. This provides real time service to patients, where the doctor is providing a consultation and diagnosis immediately to the patient. This technology also allows doctors in the U.S to perform surgeries since the satellite technology is able to support telemedicine because it provides a high amount of bandwidth. Additionally, in Haiti they are using high speed wireless internet throughout certain regions. The radio system is used in extreme cases where more advanced technology is not available, but still allows doctors from two areas to communicate with one another. Images and messages during consultations are sent through a secured network, so the data of the patients is kept private. Obvious benefits of using this technology include that people are able to get access to medical care and this decreases the digital divide and globalization. This is because people are able to get more care and consultation through using this IT technology, which would not have been available without telemedicine. However, some issues still arise despite these benefits in medical care. This includes the security of information and privacy of the patients. In this case, the article states that the internet messages are secured so that there is not privacy breach. This must be done using encryption technology so that people are not discouraged from using telemedicine and so that no private patient information is leaked or seen by unwanted users.

After the January earthquake in Haiti, many people were left under extremely bad health conditions, with little or no health care being at their service. Haiti is a poor country, and with a natural disaster like that occurring, medical treatment for those that required it to the minimal extent was rare, let alone for the people that needed to be operated upon (such as surgical patients). The solution that some United States officials found after attempting to help Haiti with this issue was telehealth, better known as telemedicine; telemedicine was initially used for space astronauts back in the 1960s. In the situation with Haiti however (better known as "real-time"), it essentially involves a video-conference between a patient and a health professional and/or doctor in a different location (often times in hospitals or offices). Also during certain operations however, a doctor at the scene will be conferencing with a specialist at a different geographical location through the uses and benefits of telemedicine. The main IT system involved in this situation with telemedicine is satellite connections. A satellite communication system requires a satellite to function. Thus, a satellite is in high orbit over the Earth (stationary or geosynchronous, which means that the speed of the satellite is complementary to the speed of the rotaion of the Earth, thus it will always remain above the same spot). A satellite dish on Earth is then directed at the satellite, and all the signals (voice & data information, television signals, etc.) are transmitted on an uplink. The satellite itself (while still in orbit outer space) has a receiving antenna mechanism which is able to capture the incoming signals towards it and is able to diverge them through an amplifying network.

continued.... After this process, it then re-transmits the signals to the designated receivers (these signals are waves that go upon a certain frequency). Depending on what the frequencies are, when it comes to telemedicine, the frequencies are repudicated for an instance, and the digital data is then linked to set receivers. These data packets are routed through satellite, which makes the end (whether it is a phone call or the merging of voice and data transmission such as video-conferencing) come along. The satellite may be compared to a ground-based signal, in which the signal points upward and it is later reflected down back at the user/client. Therefore, with sufficient bandwidth, Haiti is running on high-speed Internet access. As a result of this IT system involved (as well as the use of telemedicine), social and ethical issues emerge. The use of such IT devices and systems such as satellite linkage and telemedicine through video-conferencing was not present in Haiti even before the earthquake. However, with the aid of other countries, more advanced form of health care came into view. This is a breakthrough from the digital divide, where Haiti was not able to provide proper medical care for its citizens. Another issue that comes into play (vexing from the digital divide) is globalization. Doctors on the seen are able to provide their patients with the best care by either consulting a specialist from a remote area far away, or the patients who require health care have video-conferences with doctors in order to discuss health related issues. This breaks down the barrier in which Haitians were facing with little or no medical support.

After hurricane Karl hit and practically flooded all of Veracruz, Mexico, many people were left wounded. This article talks about three specific patients who had "hard to heal ulcers" or the stakeholders. Along with the patients, the other stakeholders in this case were the specialists reviewing the information sent to them and the people present in the same location as the4 patient. These patients were taken to PEMEX General Hospital in Veracruz. Pictures were taken using digital cameras and were small enough to be sent to through email to specialists in Mexico City. There, they analyzed the high quality pictures and were able to give a diagnostic. An issue could be security since these files are being sent through regular email as clearly stated in the article " small enough to be sent via regular email ". If there isnt a specific network that these health centers are using it might not be delivered without having someone have looked at it before. The IT system(s) in this case were the digital camera used to take pictures of the patients injuries. The computer was also another system as well as cameras used for video conferencing. By having been able use telemedicine, it saved the energy of the patients having to go to another state just to be treated.

This is not a new item, it is an abstract of a medical journal article.

In this article the stakeholders are worried about the internet connectivity. Since many people are using it today as we speak they are watching videos, tv shows, listening to music from the Internet, and many others and would be known as stakeholders. The issue here is the reliability of the hardware. In the article it states that the copper wires that were initially put for calling which only required voice. Now it has increased with much more and in order for the internet connectivity to increase there needs to be more of a solution than fiber optic cables since it was not planted in to the ground before. The IT systems that requiring so much internet speeds are computers, mobile devices, computers within the doctors office, and many other. For tele medicine to continue there needs to sufficient or reliable internet connectivity. For instance, say a doctor wanted to help out another doctor in India. For the doctor in America it wouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. If the hospital did not have its own secure internet then it would have taken a long time since other internet connectors are using it to download and upload video,stream live music, and much more. The point here is that for one to have accessibility in the internet connectivity there needs to be globalization. Globalization will help increase and satisfy almost everyone's needs.

This news article talks about the new rules that are focused around EHR. The situation is that despite the push toward "electronic health records by Washington, the transition toward EHR still has a long way to go." Last year, the American Medical Association estimated that there were over 800,000 physicians in the U.S., said Practice Fusion, which offers a free Web-based system to doctors. But only 6.3 percent of them said they had a fully functional electronic medical records system in place. There was and attempt to resolve this by these rules. The government is hoping to clarify the conditions under which doctors and hospitals can collect payments by investing in electronic health records, or EHR, for the next few years. Calling the rules a "significant milestone," General Electric said they include important changes that make the objectives for incentive payments more realistic for medical providers. The exact rules that are going into place are: "One of the rules, issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, defines the "meaningful use" objectives that medical professionals must meet to qualify for the payments. The goal of this rule is to provide greater flexibility by offering a menu of different objectives and procedures that providers can choose from to qualify. The other rule, issued by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, defines the standards that must be met by EHR technology so medical providers are confident that the equipment they use will actually perform all the required functions."

Good background on RFID

Informative, but not good for lead article.

Very informative article that covers positive impacts of RFID tagging in hospitials.

Obama has given a vast quantity of money to impact the way health cares use the technology. In other words, he hopes that supporting them with financial help, any health care facility would be able to use the technology created. The advantage of the EHR (Electronic Health Records) would be that doctors and medical nurses wouldn't have to hassle in writing every single record of a patient, rather just simply put in the information in a database which other hospital or medical facilities can easily obtain. This alleviates the stress of scanning and faxing information to other doctors. The usage of EHR would impact people in actually being motivated to even use it to begin with, arising the issue of people and the machines. If the people simply choose not to update patient's records into the database, the patient will be greatly affected considering that it's the health status that is at risk. In order to motivate workers to actually use the EHR, is something that must be studied according to the article. But most people who do have access to using EHR, actually use it, will begin to notice the advantages very soon, noticing that business is actually getting better and receiving more patients on a daily basis since it's possible to attend their needs. With intellectual property on the side, since data presentations becomes important too in the waiting room, many patients begin to adapt to the way services are held at local medical facilities since it becomes easier to obtain information for both the patients and doctors.