Connected Health - History

History

Connected health has its roots in telemedicine, and its more recent relative, telehealth. The first telemedicine programs were primarily undertaken to address healthcare access and/or provider shortages. Connected health is distinguished from telemedicine by:

  • A broader concern for healthcare cost, quality and efficiency, particularly as related to the chronically ill
  • Concomitant interests in making healthcare more patient centric by promoting healthcare consumerism through education, and patient feedback
  • Efforts in the direction of integrating of data generated outside of traditional healthcare settings such as the home with centralised, often electronic patient record

One of the first telemedicine clinics was founded by Dr. Kenneth Bird at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1967. The clinic addressed the fundamental problems of delivering occupational and emergency health services to employees and travellers at Boston's Logan International Airport, located three congested miles from the hospital. Over 1,000 patients are documented as having received remote treatment from doctors at MGH using the clinic's two-way audiovisual microwave circuit. The timing of Dr. Bird's clinic more or less coincided with NASA's foray into telemedicine through the use of physiologic monitors for astronauts. Other pioneering programs in telemedicine were designed to deliver healthcare services to people in rural settings.

Read more about this topic:  Connected Health

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    You that would judge me do not judge alone
    This book or that, come to this hallowed place
    Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
    Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
    Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
    And say my glory was I had such friends.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.
    Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)