title: Changing the medical world order with technological advances: the future has only begun.
abstract: It is a great honor to contribute in a small way to this book which in a way celebrates the continued evolution of telemedicine in Kosova. I was privileged to visit this brave land on several occasions in the last years. Severe circumstances were repeatedly resolved through great personal and professional sacrifice. Revolutionary solutions have been applied where evolutionary development was simply too slow in the realization of a new land in a complex world. In some ways telemedicine is emblematic of such struggle and success. We aspire to world health when world peace is elusive and hunger haunts us in the midst of plenty. Telecommunications have made it easy to report the failings of medicine, the injustice of health care and the unmet promise of political endeavor. It is the promise of telemedicine to use those same channels of information to empower, unify and advance the cause of health rather than only report the failings. Telemedicine entails the use of telecommunications and information technology to support the delivery of health care at a distance. There are critics who believe telemedicine is a waste of precious resources, which are needed urgently for higher health priorities. Telemedicine is dismissed as an expensive irrelevance, another distraction from the real needs of medicine in a chaotic world. That is patently ridiculous. Telemedicine is a part of the wider phenomenon of information and information is arguably the strongest change agent in play for medicine and other societal elements as well. A well-informed public armed with the tools for self-determination and the evidence for efficient action cannot be corrupted. Telemedicine is a part of the great change information brings to the world order, a drastic change toward a better world of health and justice.
authors.affiliation: Virginia Commonwealth University, Department of Surgery, USA. ronald.merrell@vcu.edu
authors.forename: Ronald C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Merrell
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D014943:Global Health; D006801:Humans; D007256:Information Systems / Q000639:trends*; D038622:Internationality; D018581:Technology Transfer; D013685:Telecommunications / Q000639:trends; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000639:trends*