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Telemedicine is a
movement that the military is taking very seriously.
Telemedicine’s single-day turnaround means military hospitals abroad
don’t have to transfer every soldier whose injuries might need a second
look to other facilities. In turn, this saves money in transport and
hospital fees.
The system that the military uses while in Iraq and Afghanistan plugs
into a satellite connection from Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in
Germany, linking all of the notebook PCs scattered across the hospital’s
roughly dozen tents, including those for pharmacy, emergency, logistics
and labs. Server and router equipment in Landstuhl and the remote
locations transmit to the other facilities.
The connections allow simultaneous two-way voice, data and
high-resolution video transmissions. Military doctors in have at their
disposal phone lines using voice over IP. The medical system carries
anything from large e-mail attachments to interactive examinations. The
combat support hospitals have set up telemedicine systems for radiology,
dermatology, ophthalmology, and psychiatry. Scanned X-rays, ultrasounds,
and CAT scans requiring second opinions are the most frequently
transmitted items. |
