Telemedicine and natural disasters: various services, requirements, challenges, and general framework

Providing early health care services in natural disaster is one of the essential applications of telemedicine. This narrative review aims to investigate the applications, advantages and challenges of telemedicine in natural disaster-stricken areas. Medline (through PubMed), Web of Science (WOS), and Scopus databases were searched for related articles published from beginning to 2022. The keywords used for the search included "telemedicine" and "natural disaster." After removing duplicate papers, irrelevant review articles and letters to editors, 44 relevant papers were selected and reviewed. Information sharing through audio, visual, and data-oriented services is among critical approaches that telemedicine services mainly use. Teleconsultation, tele-education, remote interpretation, tele-psychiatry, and tele-surgery are among measures that can be implemented in emergencies like earthquakes, fires, floods, storms, and drought. The fundamental requirements of a telemedicine-oriented system for providing emergency services in natural disasters include wireless scales, conversation tools, blood pressure monitor, respiratory rate monitor, spo2 sensor, glucometer, portable ultrasound unit, wearable thermometers, virtual stethoscopes, portable three leads electrocardiograph monitor, and digital otoscopes. Simple telemedicine systems can have many advantages in the natural disasters. However, the main challenge in this regard is to adapt the necessary communication systems to a telemedicine paradigm. Another critical challenge is to interpret and apply the summary of acquired information and the inevitable interaction outcomes at the required time and place

Data infrastructures and digital labour : the case of teleradiology

In this thesis, I investigate the effects of digitalisation in teleradiology, the practice of outsourcing radiology diagnosis, through an analysis of the role of infrastructures that enable the transfer, storage, and processing of digital medical data. Consisting of standards, code, protocols and hardware, these infrastructures contribute to the making of complex supply chains that intervene into existing labour processes and produce interdependent relations among radiologists, patients, data engineers, and auxiliary workers. My analysis focuses on three key infrastructures that facilitate teleradiology: Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), the Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) standard, and the Health Level 7 (HL7) standard. PACS is a system of four interconnected components: imaging hardware, a secure network, viewing stations for reading images, and data storage facilities. All of these components use DICOM, which specifies data formats and network protocols for the transfer of data within PACS. HL7 is a standard that defines data structures for the purposes of transfer between medical information systems. My research draws on fieldwork in teleradiology companies in Sydney, Australia, and Bangalore, India, which specialise in international outsourcing of medical imaging diagnostics and provide services for hospitals in Europe, USA, and Singapore, among others. I argue that PACS, DICOM, and HL7 establish a technopolitical context that erodes boundaries between social institutions of labour management and material infrastructures of data control. This intertwining of bureaucratic and infrastructural modes of regulation gives rise to a variety of strategies deployed by companies for maximising productivity, as well as counter-strategies of workers in leveraging mobility and qualifications to their advantage

Satellite Communications: Impact on Developing Economies

Access to information and communication infrastructure greatly enhances economic growth. When a reliable and affordable medium for information exchange is available, previously unanticipated developments ensue. Most areas in developing countries are sparsely populated and highly rural. Satellite communication is an excellent option for meeting this and many other pressing communication needs of developing economies. This paper examines the impact of satellite communication on developing economies, using popular examples as case study

Preliminary benefits study for a public service communications satellite system: Task order 2

The economic and social benefits to accrue from an operational public service communications satellite system are estimated for the following applications: teleradiology, emergency medical services, teleconferencing for both civilian and defense agencies, data transfer, remote cardiac monitoring, teleconsultation, continuing education for professionals, and severe storm warning. The potential impact of improved communication on the cost and quality of services are assessed for various agencies, professions, and industries

Managing technological change in a military treatment facility: a case study of medical diagnostic imaging support (MDIS) system

Picture archiving and communication system (PACS) represents an enormously expensive technological innovation in digital imaging which has the potential to alter the way in which radiology is practiced. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a better understanding of the requirements for PACS technology and the implementation of information systems in medical facilities. The objective of PACS technology is to improve access to radiographic images and reports throughout medical facilities while decreasing the cost of image production and storage. Medical Diagnostic Imaging Support (MDIS) system is the military tri-service project to install PACS in selected U.S. military medical treatment facilities (MTF) in an attempt to create a totally filmless environment. This thesis includes a case study of the implementation of the MDIS system at Madigan Army Medical Center and the change management issues that surround the introduction of an information system in a health care organization. The issues brought forth in this study are derived from two change models in the implementation of information systems.http://archive.org/details/managingtechnolo1094542869U.S. Navy (USN) authorApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Toward a Discourse Community for Telemedicine: A Domain Analytic View of Published Scholarship

In the past 20 years, the use of telemedicine has increased, with telemedicine programs increasingly being conducted through the Internet and ISDN technologies. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the discourse community of telemedicine. This study examined the published literature on telemedicine as it pertains to quality of care, defined as correct diagnosis and treatment (Bynum and Irwin 2011). Content analysis and bibliometrics were conducted on the scholarly discourse, and the most prominent authors and journals were documented to paint and depict the epistemological map of the discourse community of telemedicine. A taxonomy based on grounded research of scholarly literature was developed and validated against other existing taxonomies. Telemedicine has been found to increase the quality and access of health care and decrease health care costs (Heinzelmann, Williams, Lugn and Kvedar 2005 and Wootton and Craig 1999). Patients in rural areas where there is no specialist or patients who find it difficult to get to a doctor’s office benefit from telemedicine. Little research thus far has examined scholarly journals in order to aggregate and analyze the prevalent issues in the discourse community of telemedicine. The purpose of this dissertation is to empiricallydocument the prominent topics and issues in telemedicine by examining the related published scholarly discourse of telemedicine during a snapshot in time. This study contributes to the field of telemedicine by offering a comprehensive taxonomy of the leading authors and journals in telemedicine, and informs clinicians, librarians and other stakeholders, including those who may want to implement telemedicine in their institution, about issues telemedicine

Comparison of Navigation Techniques for Large Digital Images

Medical images are examined on computer screens in a variety of contexts. Frequently, these images are larger than computer screens, and computer applications support different paradigms for user navigation of large images. The paper reports on a systematic investigation of what interaction techniques are the most effective for navigating images larger than the screen size for the purpose of detecting small image features. An experiment compares five different types of geometrically zoomable interaction techniques, each at two speeds (fast and slow update rates) for the task of finding a known feature in the image. There were statistically significant performance differences between several groupings of the techniques. The fast versions of the ArrowKey, Pointer, and ScrollBar performed the best. In general, techniques that enable both intuitive and systematic searching performed the best at the fast speed, while techniques that minimize the number of interactions with the image were more effective at the slow speed. Additionally, based on a postexperiment questionnaire and qualitative comparison, users expressed a clear preference for the Pointer technique, which allowed them to more freely and naturally interact with the image