In the Wired article, Virtual Soldiers? Dream on, Darpa, By Noah Shachtman (Aug. 14, 2003), we get a glimpse of the future of computer aided medical care, an application area the Telework Consortium is interested in in the form of video telemedicine.

Dr. Richard Satava is the manager of Darpa's Virtual Soldier program and professor of surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle:

"Satava's  idea is to use MRIs, CT scans, X-rays and ultrasound to create a holographic medical electronic representation, or holomer, of a person's body. With a holomer in hand, a doctor will have a patient's base line -- a "before" picture to compare with the current situation."

...

"The holomer also might be able to use predictive algorithms to look into the body's future."

...

"Satava is convinced that the holomer is closer to reality than people think, however. With the government's full weight behind the Virtual Soldier, he believes it could help medics with automatic diagnoses in 10 years or less."

As expected, there is a lively discussion on the feasibility of this plan as well as how long (if ever) it might take to get there.

A related article published was along with this one, No More Human Guinea Pigs, (same author, date, and publisher), takes a look at the use of a virtual body to replace testing on humans, improving the quality of medical care.

"One of the goals of Satava's Virtual Soldier program is to change that by creating an army of digital test subjects that can be subjected to new drugs, new medical procedures -- even new weapons."

Obviously, once all this data on a human body has been computerized, the real-life patients and medical experts can be located anywhere in the world, enabling remote diagnosis and treatment... or "extreme telemedicine."

Want to know more about the use of videoconferencing in telemedicine? Read Healing Hearts by Remote Control, a BBC News article by Charles Haviland, describes how a doctor in Bangalore, India cares for patients thousands of miles away using video and data conferencing over a satellite link. 

11:32:32 AM    
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