[LINK] How far the fibre?

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Karl Auer wrote:
> 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

Not only is access to alochol/petrol a problem for remote communities, nutrition 
is as it is in the wider/city communities.

Fresh food and vegetables are not available or very expensive - and traditional 
food gathering and therapeutic skills and knowledge has been devalued or lost in 
some communities.

> 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.
> 


-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au
Phone: 0414 869202