Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information
technologies in order to provide clinical health care at a
distance. It helps eliminate distance barriers and can improve
access to medical services that would often not be consistently
available in distant rural communities. It is also used to save
lives in critical care and emergency situations. Although there
were distant precursors to telemedicine, it is essentially a
product of 20th century telecommunication and information
technologies. These technologies permit communications between
patient and medical staff with both convenience and fidelity, as
well as the transmission of medical, imaging and health
informatics data from one site to another. Early forms of
telemedicine achieved with telephone and radio have been
supplemented with videotelephony, advanced diagnostic methods
supported by distributed client/server applications, and
additionally with telemedical devices to support in-home care.
Other expressions similar to telemedicine are the