[LINK] Minister, Turnbull, Windsor...discuss NBN on Insight

[Tom Worthington]

Marghanita da Cruz wrote:

>> ... STEPHEN CONROY ... HFC cable is configured deliberately to be
>> 100 download and 2meg up. You cannot do most of the e-health 
>> applications that Malcolm keeps trying to quote there from America.
>>  ...

It would be relatively cheap and easy to connect up a few thousand
hospitals and major medical clinics in Australia to high speed broadband 
for tele-medicine. But you don't need the NBN for that, nor millions of 
connections to homes.

For tele-medicine applications you need trained staff at the patient's 
end of the link. You can't have the patient sitting at home alone in 
front of a video screen. There needs to be a trained professional with 
the patient to carry out part of the examination, under the remote 
specialist's direction.

Something which will an impact on e-health is the Apple iPad. I take 
part in the US based EDUCAUSE Instructional Technologies Constituent 
Group <http://www.educause.edu/cg/insttech?bhcp=1>.
What struck me was the number of universities introducing the iPad for 
training doctors, pharmacists, dentists and nurses. This could 
popularise easy to use medical applications and make e-health a 
practical reality.

The ACT Health Library, provided by the Australian National University, 
has a list of iPhone/iPad/Mobile medical applications. This includes 
several reference works which require medical staff to register with 
their corporate identification to gain access. Others are apps for a 
moderate charge. There are also dozens of free items for medical 
students and patient education: 
<http://tch.anu.edu.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=126&Itemid=159>.

More in my blog at: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/10/ipad-in-medical-training.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/