The day is not far when a patient and a doctor will meet over the Internet in real time
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Internet medicine, which is now beginning to develop at the same time as the medical information services appearing on the Internet, is part of an overall branch of telemedicine that provides medical services at a distance through advanced communications such as optical lines, satellites and video conferencing equipment.
As part of Internet medicine, an information service is provided to doctors via e-mail.
Healthrel is an international Internet corporation of physicians, paramedical workers, medical librarians and informants. Doctors can direct queries to the corporation on specific issues, ask to scan databases for them, and more.
The greatness of Internet medicine is that it does not require expensive equipment. A simple desktop scanner can scan medical images. A doctor can attach the image from a file to a standard e-mail document and send it to his colleagues, for consultation purposes. The patient can also scan the medical images in his possession, attach to them the results of other tests, and send them to experts all over the world, for the purpose of obtaining medical opinions.
Internet medicine will also include innovative inventions. At Johns Hopkins University, they are working on developing an innovative device that will allow an ophthalmologist to photograph a patient's retina and send the photograph, by e-mail, to diagnostic centers. Various bodies are even developing software that will allow a person to attach sensors to his body, and to transmit to the doctor via the Internet findings about his physiological condition, for example the results of a blood pressure test, or an A-K-C diagram. The doctor will be able to send him his opinion immediately.
One of the problems of Internet medicine lies in the loss of the direct connection between medicine and the patient. The transfer of video images in real time via the Internet is still problematic, but at the dizzying pace of technological development, the day when a doctor's "home visit" will be carried out via the Internet is certainly not far off. In such a visit, the patient and the doctor will see each other in real time, through the computer, and perform all the actions that are done today in a physical meeting.
Such a "visit" was demonstrated in several exhibitions dealing with the "House of the Future", which took place in Israel and abroad in the past year and presented computerized medical-home equipment. Among other things, a prototype of a home device for testing blood and urine was also presented at the exhibitions. The problem will begin when people will get virtual diseases since in the absence of the personal doctor-patient relationship the rate of predictions may increase.
Published in "Haaretz" 15/09/1997. Uploaded as part of the archive project of materials I wrote in the various media in which I worked. (father.)
The future in medicine: a cell phone watch that will track blood pressure and a doctor's virtual home visits
22/7/2004
An astronaut who has flown into space in recent years wears a space suit equipped with sensors that measure almost all of the astronaut's medical values and report in real time to the space agency's medical center. The astronaut's medical monitoring is therefore done far away from him, on Earth. Any abnormality in parameters such as: pulse rate, blood oxygen level, body temperature or EKG chart, is immediately received at the space agency and studied there.
Using this technology, the medical condition of the astronauts is updated in real time, and of course tens of kilograms of medical monitoring devices are also saved. If the need arises for any medical procedure, the space shuttle doctor will be guided via video by the medical team on Earth. This sophisticated technology of remote medical monitoring is called "telemedicine". Is this how the doctor will diagnose the state of our health, without us getting out of bed?
Granted, most of us don't travel around space, but it's clear that we also need medical monitoring from time to time. When we are at home, the only medical monitoring device we often have is the thermometer. If we need to find out about some medical symptom, then we have to go to one of the medical centers, that is, waste time and money.
If, God forbid, we are sick, disabled or exhausted, then this task involves, by far, a lot of effort, and in many cases it is precisely this public that needs medical examination services at a frequency of about a week. Moreover, sometimes we are left in the hospital just because we need to be "medically monitored". The truth is that we are already "dying" to go home.
Telemedicine and spaceships
Now imagine a reality where, like the astronauts in space, we too will be able to perform medical monitoring remotely, even from anywhere on the globe. Imagine a reality where, to undergo medical tests, we would not have to leave the house. Imagine a reality where our private doctor will be able to receive all our medical values even if we are abroad, at work or anywhere else. Imagine a reality where we don't have to be hospitalized to undergo medical follow-up, and we don't even have to be confined to the house.
Imagine a reality where our family doctor will make a home visit via video call. He will receive all our medical values online, and at the end of the visit he will send us a prescription so that we can go to the pharmacy and purchase the drugs. Imagine a reality where an ambulance that has alarmed a patient, will transmit all the data about the patient to the trauma center in the hospital. When he arrives at the hospital, the medical team will already be prepared and ready for him with all the necessary information for his treatment. Thanks to the application of spacecraft telemedicine technology on Earth, this reality will be possible in ten years, and maybe it will also be the property of all of us.
Telemedicine, by definition, is any delivery of medical assistance from a distance. Each of the call centers known to us, such as Shehal and Natali, is considered a telemedicine center. The use of telecommunication technologies and information technologies to optimize remote medical services, redefines the term "telemedicine", and increases the efficiency of telemedicine centers, and of course their profitability, by tens of thousands. As the development of the technologies progresses, naturally, their cost will also decrease.
It is also assumed that in the coming years the health funds will also get on board and start using telemedicine more. There is no doubt that the health insurance funds will only do this when it is clear beyond any doubt that telemedicine technologies have the potential to reduce the costs of medical services.
Erez Elrai, CEO of Shahal: "As life expectancy increases, so does the number of sick people, and as a result, medical services become very expensive. Already today we pay money for every visit to a doctor, and in the future we will pay much more. This trend will only stop if the health funds adopt the telemedicine technologies.
"Through telemedicine it will be possible to treat a larger number of people, without the need for hospitalization. There will be early detection of diseases, which means there will be effective prevention, and there will be no need for hospitalization for follow-up. Recently, it has been proven beyond any doubt that the use of telemedicine reduces the cost of medical services by about 30 percent."
"In the last hundred years, the only medical device found in almost every home is the thermometer," Elrai continues. "Look at what has happened in the world since then: airplanes, spaceships, computers, but in terms of medical equipment, we have almost nothing except a thermometer. In ten years, in my opinion, every home will be connected to some kind of system that uses the technology of telemedicine services. It simply cannot be otherwise.
"You have to understand that there are medical parameters that are a little more important than measuring the temperature. There is no reason why measurements such as heart rate, EKG, blood and respiration - we will not be able to receive them from home. By the way, today there are already eye tests done via telemedicine, and many other medical tests. Regular medical monitoring, which is not felt at all physically, can prevent many diseases. Beyond that, I assume there will also be other innovations that are still difficult to anticipate. Ten years ago, no one believed that it was even possible to transmit EKG results over the phone, and today it is almost self-evident."
In fact, telemedicine technologies enable the transfer of medical data through all media: telephone lines, mobile telephone lines and Internet lines. Through the easy transfer of information, in the future each person will have an electronic medical file, to which he can transfer the findings of the regular tests he conducts, and he will also be able to give different permissions to the different doctors according to their specialty. Also, any doctor will be able to send medical information to his colleague, and in this way consult him online. One of the important companies that will promote these technologies is a new Israeli company called "Medic-Touch".
The president of the company, Dr. Eran Shankar, is certainly entitled to the title "the first Israeli space doctor". Dr. Shankar: "When I served as a space doctor at the American Space Agency, I received training there, accompanied space missions and learned the standard of the space medical systems. I am also a member of the team of 128 scientists planning the clinical clinic on Mars, that is, the telemedicine systems that will be on Mars. This clinic will really start around 2014."
Monitoring through the cellular clock
When Dr. Shankar returned to Israel, he founded the "Medic-Touch" company. The company, according to him, "translates space technology that is suitable for a small number of people - that is, astronauts - to each of us here on earth. Our company has recently launched two products. One is a cellular heart rate monitor, which is aided by advanced telemedicine technologies of the space agency. This system is actually software that can be downloaded to any advanced cell phone, and with its help you can do various things such as automatically alert a medical center when the heart rate is in distress.
"The second product is a biomedical watch, which regularly monitors all life indicators: pulse, oxygen level, blood pressure, temperature and EKG. When there are changes and abnormalities in these indices, they will be transmitted by the device to medical centers such as Natali, Shehal and others, and will even report the person's location. The mobile medicine we are developing will allow the sick person to move around freely and not stay at home when he needs medical supervision. He will be able to be constantly monitored through his cell phone watch, and in fact continue his life as usual."
Amos Shavit, Maar
