title: Telemedicine: where is technology taking us?
abstract: Five years ago, a few zealots in Switzerland, at the CERN Laboratory, were contemplating using the Internet for hypertext and for transfer of still images, recorded sounds, and compressed video files. Five years later, the World Wide Web defines a set of standards for packaging and routing information over the Internet that involve millions of people and personal computers and that allowed a start-up Netscape to enjoy a capitalization of more than $2 billion when it sold stock to the public recently. Now, video-conferencing and multimedia electronic mail over the Internet are the fascinations of engineers at NASA, and the MBONE Information Web, the province of technophiles with UNIX workstations. Five years from now, you may be participating in telemedicine sessions frequently, from your workstation, and think nothing of it.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ruffin
mesh_terms: D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000639:trends; D003253:Consultants; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D019114:Remote Consultation / Q000639:trends*; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000639:trends*; D014481:United States