Reach Out and Heal Someone: Telemedicine and the Globalization of Health Care

Abstract

This article considers how telemedicine emerged as an important new means of constructing new geographic and social relationships in health care. Telemedicine is considered in light of the telecommunications revolution of the 1990s and the potential for expanding health markets during this period. An argument is made that telemedicine is part of an actuarial mode of organizing peoples according to the interests of emerging health care corporations. The techniques of the field are central components of a spatial social ordering of subjects into populations within a newly converged global health network. This article argues that telemedicine is not simply a new approach to delivering health care better, it is a method of tailoring health-care communities to match the demands of a global health economy.

The Transformative Role of Telemedicine on Coordination: A Practice Approach

“…Pathologists in the consulting center were giving the distant IOCs a lower priority than less urgent local cases, leading to delays. Patients from local hospitals may have a higher priority than those served by telepathology [7]. The presence of objects and digital mediation can reduce the need for face-to-face engagement, leading to distance and neglect [2].…”

“…Telemedicine is more than a faster way to access existing healthcare resources; it also represents an organizational and social innovation [7]. Telemedicine can be conceived as a collaboration platform connecting experts to non-experts [5].…”

Managing Telehealth and Telecare

“…Also, a range of healthcare solutions exists to support patients once at home, for example different tele-medicine and monitoring solutions [20,27,28]. Much of the previously reported on homecare design work within research have been rather technology-driven [13], demonstrating for example technological requirements and possibilities with tele-care and tele-monitoring [29].…”

Global eHealth

“…It is expected to render distance meaningless and to break down barriers to the provision of health care (Mort, May and Williams 2003;Bashshur and Shannon 2009). In a world where people are apparently 'dying for lack of knowledge' (Global Healthcare Information Network 2014), this envisioned digital clinic is anticipated to 'reach out and heal someone ' (Cartwright 2000), no matter where they are physically located.The suggestion that digital networks reduce obstacles related to distance is not unique to eHealth. Over the last few years, the 'death of distance' and the arrival of postgeographic realities have been extensively announced in various academic and institutional circles (Cairncross 1997;Robins 1997).…”