I like the article I found recently on rural telemedicine. It talks about linking patients in remote areas of the country and even the world with health care specialists and testing that will open up incredible possibilities for these people.

Imagine a patient who may have an internal bleed. Local health care is unable to adequately assess the patient locally. Do you transport the patient by ground for hours to a specialty center only to find that they didn’t need to go there? This technology offers these borderline patients a chance to be “seen” by doctors who are located elsewhere (perhaps around the world), and have the assessing team on location be guided in their assessment by the specialist.

Nurses or local doctors act as the eyes and ears of the specialist, transmit data, video, or audio files to the distant location and have a better chance at saving the patient the need for extended costs of specialty care and transport if they don’t need it.  It also offers diagnostic tools to catch problems that might be missed.