How broadband eHealth will work.

One of the big supposed applications of high speed broadband is ‘eHealth.’ Usually, what is envisaged is a surgeon in Sydney operating on a critically injured patient at some outback station.

My prediction is that eHealth will be most critical for the most routine and mundane of medical issues rather than the most specialised and exceptional. Consider the following scenario: your child has a sore ear at say 6pm at night. Panadol and other pain treatments have not been doing much good. Without broadband, you would have to take said child (and perhaps other children as well if there is not adult around) and go to the doctors. At that time, you are out of hours, and so the waiting time is much longer. If you are lucky, you are back home by 8pm with some anti-biotics (if the ear is infected) and perhaps some re-assurance (if it is not too bad).

With broadband, you might do something different. You login and email your complaint to a GP online. They then ask you to take the child’s temperature and also to send them a picture of the inside of the ear using this device. The GP then diagnoses the illness, emails a prescription the the pharmacist. Then you might have to leave the house for 15 minutes to pick antibiotics up or you can have another adult do it. All done by 6:30 with minimal disruption to you and the GP. And what is more, at no time in this story did we need high-speed broadband to get all of this.

[CoreEcon]
9:16:43 AM    

Tiburon middle school puts a laptop on every pupil's lap -- teachers and students give the idea both passing and failing grades.

Del Mar Middle School in Tiburon is finding itself in the front row of a debate about the use of technology in the classroom. Two years ago, the well-funded public school became the first in the Bay Area to give a take-home laptop to each of its 335 students. Although Del Mar educators acknowledge that laptops have led to inappropriate classroom use by students -- playing games like Tetris and e-mailing buddies can be too much for a wired tween to resist -- the program, they say, has led to a positive shift in classroom dynamics. Teachers are less likely to lecture at students and more likely to assign them to do their own research, resulting in more hands-on learning. But a study in March by the U.S. Department of Education found no demonstrable link between educational software and higher test scores, putting laptop advocates on the defensive. A stream of news articles focused on school districts in New York and Florida that dumped laptop programs, citing high costs, misuse by students and the unfavorable results raised in the federal study.

[Source: SFGate.com]
9:11:05 AM