DISTANCE LEARNING: THE ROLE OF TELEMEDICINE

Growing awareness of the potential benefits of advanced medicine, emerging democracies, growing middle classes and an ageing population world-wide are significant forces shaping future demand for world-class health care. Coupled with an increased awareness of the potential benefits of advanced modern medical technologies, these factors will have a dramatic impact on medical education systems. Traditional academic institutions might not represent the optimal approach to education in the 21st century. They are expensive to build and run, typically reward academic excellence not exceptional health care delivery, teach matriculating students on site, and tend to perpetuate themselves. The expertise of centres of excellence needs to be disseminated more widely, to a 'student' or client base interacting with the institution only episodically. As relevant geographic distances increase, access to such centres becomes more difficult. To attack this problem on a global basis, we must be able to teach and interact at a distance. Telemedicine is likely to form an essential part of the solution.