[LINK] How far the fibre?

[Karl Auer]

On Mon, 2007-07-02 at 20:16 +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 11:39:29AM +1000, Eric Scheid wrote:
> > and not tele-medicine provided via fat broadband?
> 
> not very useful for acute appendicitis, or a car crash, or poisoning or
> any of the many other things that require on-the-spot expertise, right
> now...rather than booked days or weeks in advance.

There are lots of different types of "telemedecine". One type supports a
medical professional with the expertise, offered remotely, of other
medical professionals. The high-tech equivalent of a phone call to a
colleague in the city, but with high-definition pictures of the problem
and so on. Even a non-professional could be made far more useful with
such a hookup. Needs pretty good bandwidth to be useful at all though.

The whole point of such systems is that they *are* "right now".

Even though they are no substitute for a real medico in the right place
at the right time, they are a lot better than nothing, and they increase
the "reach" of an ordinary doctor, an ordinary paramedic or (worst case)
even a lay person enormously.

> not terribly useful for surgery, either. even if tele-operated devices
> became good enough to be useful for general surgery, it would require a
> huge investment in the required equipment

I think such equipment is still a long way off in a general sense
anyway, though some hyper-specialised machinery is now available. And
hugely expensive, as you say.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)