Telemedicine infrastructure development

Abstract

While there are significant technical and regulatory barriers to developing an adequate infrastructure for telemedicine, even more fundamental organizational and financial infrastructure issues must be addressed if this technology is to realize its potential. The lack of good evaluative data on telemedicine consultations has been a further major stumbling block to its acceptance by both practitioners and policy-makers. This paper discusses these issues and suggests approaches for overcoming many of the impediments to telemedicine.