Recent advances: Telemedicine

Abstract

Telemedicine is an umbrella term that encompasses any medical activity involving an element of distance. In its commonly understood sense, in which a doctor-patient interaction involves telecommunication, it goes back at least to the use of ship to shore radio for giving medical advice to sea captains. A few years ago the term telemedicine began to be supplanted by the term telehealth, which was thought to be more “politically correct,” but in the past year or so this too has been overtaken by even more fashionable terms such as online health and e-health.