ABSTRACT
Telemedicine is the practice of medicine or analyzing medical data remotely. Communications technology has reached the singularity point, often referred to as a transformational event. In artificial intelligence, the singularity is the creation of intelligent machines, or in astronomy it’s a property with infinite mass such as the center of a black hole or the universe before the “Big Bang,” not the TV show, my personal favorite. Instant communications is ubiquitous, which is the first essential part of telemedicine. The second is quality wireless medical monitoring device-software, and some are currently available: iHealth, Fitbit®, FlexTM, and the iWatch. All have medical monitoring technology, this is just the beginning. The term “mHealth” is linked to this second step; it refers to medical practice using mobile monitoring devices, a subset of the larger telehealth field. The last is the overwhelming need to pivot to telemedicine. In the United States, 10,000 baby boomers hit 65 every day. Healthcare companies are trying to reduce hospital stays and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is focused on prevention strategies. Telehealth [9] fits the bill for prevention, i.e., responding in a timely fashion before conditions become acute and require hospitalization or monitoring recently released inpatients. Telemedicine should become mainstream (Figure 6.1).
