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The IUP Journal of Infrastructure:
Telemedicine: Bridging the Doctor-Patient Divide
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Telemedicine is a process by which patients can be examined, monitored and treated while the patient and doctor are geographically dispersed. This is of a great help especially in the context of developing countries. In this case, technology is of utmost importance and this technology solution has to take into consideration aspects such as assurance, empathy, responsiveness, reliability and tangibility of service as part of the total product. The final frontier of telemedicine is robotics. Robots have been used in manufacturing, space exploration and mining quite extensively but robots for medical purposes like surgical procedure have been used quite rarely. However, there are many other soft issues that might provide an obstacle for the adoption of telemedicine solutions such as the privacy and confidentiality of information that is transferred, face-to-face interaction etc.

This is one of the pitfalls of the concept of telemedicine. A case study is provided which shows that there will be a time when the people will choose this concept because of time and the cost factor in visiting the doctor especially for a small problem but still the softer part cannot always be ignored wherein the patients prefer to have face-to-face interaction.

 

Telemedicine, interaction, patients, technology, confidentiality, dispersed, empathy, exploration, assurance, geographically, surgical, service, obstacle, privacy, responsiveness, tangibility, mining, medical, manufacturing, information, exploration.