Robots performing complex surgical procedures directed by medical specialists at major hospitals continents away. Dark, bubbling aquariums where babies born too soon breathe special liquids that allow their premature lungs to develop. Pocket-sized computers programming new nerve networks, so people with spinal cord injuries can walk again.
Video phones and satellite linkup to far away expert eyes which offer trauma treatment skills when serious accidents and catastrophes occur.

Welcome to the world of telemedicine where space-age technologies will challenge and revitalize our future system of health care.

These dramatic, seemingly farfetched medical scenarios already are, or soon will be realities, reports Maryann Karinch. In Telemedicine: What the Future Holds When You're Ill, the author describes a new age in medical care. In it, fully equipped MASH units with videophones and satellite linkups can speed assistance to battle and accident sites by connecting the top specialists to victims continents away. Tiny robots will perform complex telesurgery. DataGlove links, trauma pods incorporating imaging capabilities, wireless communications and virtual reality-aided surgery will be readily available whenever and wherever critical needs arise.
In this new milieu, people in underdeveloped parts of the world will benefit, for the first time, from quality medical care. These new methods will also be used in space. The first demonstration of this dynamic new technology was an earth-space telemedicine network linking the Mayo Clinic in the United States to the space shuttle Columbia.
Karinch also examines the impending controversies about telemedicine already splitting the medical community. Although considerable legislation, and former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, tout the benefits for health care and the cost efficiency of telemedicine, many insurance executives, regulatory officials and hospital administrators voice concern about questions of free structures, malpractice, patient privacy, doctor-patient relationships and the possibility of image and data manipulation.
In this provocative and prophetic book, Karinch explores today's frontiers of medicine and the remarkable advances on the horizon. She suggests innovative, practical ways in which potential health care problems and issues can be addressed in the present, clearing the way for the remarkable new technologies of telemedicine to benefit us all in the future.