TéléSanté

The TéléSanté is an emergent application of the Technologies Information and Communication (TIC) applied to health.

Origin

The “tele” term is a Greek prefix of origin meaning far. It moreover is used in many French words. Thus, the substantive “Télécommunications” refers to any form of remote communication; the “Télévision” is defined like the remote transmission, by cable or radio waves, of images being able to be reproduced on a screen. Within another framework of use, one can quote the male name “Téléchargement”, which corresponds to the transfer towards a local computer of a file located on a distant computer, via a telecommunication network.

TéléMédecine

For the the World Health Organization (WHO), the Télémédecine is a component of the Médecine. It fits in the universe of the health professionals, and “allows to bring departments of health, where the distance and insulation are a critical factor, by professionals (doctors in particular) using the TIC with fine diagnoses, of treatment and prevention, research and continuing education”.

Definition

The télémédecine belongs to a broader concept, the TéléSanté (French translation of EHealth). Centered on the general public, and thus the patient, télésanté or telematics of health recovers indeed “the activities, services and systems related to health, practiced remotely by means of the TIC, for the planetary needs for promotion of health, the care and the control of the epidemics, management and the industrial research to health”. They are in particular the potential of two advanced more recent techniques, initially distinct but from now on confluent, which started a true rebirth of the clinical télémédecine:

the Videoconference, authorizing the remote meeting holding (or visioréunions) by commenting on documents together;
the microprocessing and the Internet, which make it possible to transmit quickly, easily and at reasonable cost, great quantities of information multimedia.

Short history

During last years, one witnessed a rapid growth of the use of the TIC in the Health sector. These technologies, introduced in support for the major reorganizations of the health system in France and elsewhere in the world, constitute in several connections a change in the supply of care and services to the population. This form of use of the TIC is however not a new phenomenon. The first experiments go back indeed to (Source: http://medidacte.timone.univ-mrs.fr/):

1876 : Invention of the telephone (first tool exploited in télémédecine);
1905 : Einthoven transmits a ECG via phone line (1,5 km);
1948 : Transmission of images radios via phone line (38 km);
1959 : Consultations in psychiatry via specialized video network (180 km);
2001 : “Lindbergh Operation”, téléchirurgie between Strasbourg and New York via fiberoptics (7500 km).

Fields of application

Télésanté, above definite, seems very vast and varied; seven families of use can however be distinguished according to exchanged information, of the fields concerned and the involved people, according to whether the application concerned aims mainly to:

Of the exchanges of opinion between health professionals: teleconsultation and téléexpertise or visioréunions, sometimes multi-field;
To assist remotely, mainly by diagnostic and therapeutic councils, a patient locally stripped: remote support ;
To supervise in residence, into ambulatory…, a failing vital function: remote monitoring ;
To practice completely and exclusively remotely an medical act: telediagnosis , téléchirurgie ,…;
To organize the flow of the data in a network of health: cyber-networks of health ;
To deliver information even a teaching: cyberformation (e-Learning);
To take part in the management of the health systems: cybermanagement (or E-management), or more prosaically still:

To offer to the patients an direct access and permanent with their file of health or to téléservices medical: E-health ;
medicine does not owe, in France, to be exerted like a trade (Article 19 of the Code of conduct), the concept of medical E-trade is there without object…

(Source: Ministry for Higher education and Research, “Situation report on the places 2003 of the télémédecine in France”, Dr. HAZEBROUCQ Vincent)

Actors and fields

Whatever the application, the fundamental concept inherent in télésanté is not any more to move towards information, but to move information and to make it available in time and desired place. The corresponding applications thus aim to:

To put in contact:

the doctor with his patient;
the doctor with one (or several) other (S) doctor (S);
the doctor with one (or several) other (S) professional (S) of health;
the patient with one (or several) other (S) doctors, professional (S) of health, association (S) and collective (S) users, member (S) of his family, institution (S) of care, etc

To bring distant information useful for the medical exercise or the information and the wellbeing of the patient:

Of the biological results of analyzes;
Of the medical images;
Of the physiological recordings of parameters;
Of the vidéos resulting from examinations paraclinic;
Of information on a pathology;
a council, a social link;
the Besoins fundamental (which they are emotional, medical, nutritional, social or cultural and of the stage of the embryo, even of the gamètes to that for the people old);
…

This new concept covers several fields of medicine thus:

Diagnosis ;
Treatment (preventive, curative, palliative) ;
Research ;
Evaluation ;
Formation .

and of health:

Public health ;
Disease ;
Hygiene ;
Nutrition ;
Promotion of Health ;
…

Fact, precisely of the multiplicity of the covered fields, the actors implied in the various phases of a project of télésanté are numerous. Several categories thus are distinguished:

Health professionals (medical, ancillary medical, administrative,…) ;
Industrial ;
Scientific ;
Users ;
Institutional .

External bonds

the Gate of TéléSanté
Medical college of Marseilles

Random links: