Global Summit on Telemedicine & eHealth August 17-18, 2015 Houston, Texas, USA

Medical Electronics is the convergence of Electronics with the realm of Medicine. Department of Electronics and Information Technology understanding the crucial role of Electronics in Medical application has initiated a series of proactive measures. These include e-health, Telemedicine systems, Space and Telemedicine, Design and control of tele-matched surgery robot, Remote operational medicine, e-cards and Nanotechnology in Telemedicine. Growing popularity of Medical Electronics is now a growing concern on quality, safety, reliability, spiraling cost, liability and regulatory issues.

It is widely held that information technologies will revolutionize patient care, medical research, medical education and the administration of health services. It includes m-health, Telemedicine apps, Computational framework for telemedicine, Internet-based Telemedicine. Information technology is increasingly recognized as important in clinical practice, but much remains to be done to implement its use. Physicians are now often more comfortable using a keyboard rather than a pen, and this is particularly true of the new generations of medical students and residents. The recent developments in Ontological view in Telemedicine offer new opportunities for the design of new advanced Telemedicine systems providing high quality services. New trends in Telemedicine allocate Faster Internet connections and better software that provide a better video chat experience than in the past, with mobile devices, people can consult a doctor from anywhere, the adoption of electronic health records makes it easier for doctors to access patient records. Tele-health is expected to boost the U.S. market for patient monitoring by about $5 billion by the year 2020.

Technologies for disease early detection and prevention comprises Cost saving, value of Hindrance, Cost-Operative, Clinical preventive services. Dedicated home based network computers, Data Collation & multiple longitudinal trend analyses, Big Data Analysis in eHealth enhanced the tele-healthcare in rural areas. Quantitative individualized risk analysis inquires the long-term health outcomes, measuring health inclinations, could provide a more organized, transparent, and assessable process of risk-benefit balance.

Telemedicine is booming up by rapid expansion of users but no complete inventory of applications is available as of now. Clinical applications of Telemedicine include the clinical specialties and sub-specialties found in conventional clinical medicine. Telemedicine has widely applied in the areas of clinical medicine and medical education. The vast majority of medical specialties like Tele Neuropsychology, Tele Cardiology, Tele Nursing, Tele Dermatology, Tele Pediatrics, and Tele Pathology are represented by Telemedicine. Clinical applications like cardiology (pediatric and adult), psychiatry (mostly pediatric, some adult), pediatrics (general and neonatal), dermatology, and rehabilitation medicine are most frequently used. Innovative approach by Tele-Rehabilitation increases the access of medicine services in areas where there is a scarcity or absence of psychiatrists. Tele Radiology is the usage of radiology techniques which has advantages and complexities of computer-based digital technologies that include magnetic resonance imaging and computed axial tomography. Global Telemedicine Market Outlook to 2018, the authors identified market dynamics pertaining to specific countries to highlight the initiatives taken by several market players and healthcare providers to boost the telemedicine sector's growth. The market, which stood at US$ 14.2 Billion in 2012, is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.5% during 2012-2018.

Wireless medical devices created a great response for advanced healthcare and homecare. These devices eliminated the need to venture into a hospital or doctor’s office which lowered the cost of healthcare. The biomedical technologies include Remote Surgery, Bio-sensors in Telemedicine, Bioinformatics in Telemedicine, Tele Transmission, and Nanotechnology - Telemedicine. Medical robotics is an advanced and contemporary field in medical science that implicates numerous operations and extensive use of tele presence. The International Space Station serves as a testbed for the Space & Telemedicine technologies to facilitate future missions and enhance the excellence of healthcare delivery on Earth.

Gradual development in Telemedicine achieved the needs of patients in rural areas which saved the time of travel, cost and witnessed a vast improvement in quality Physician engagement, Infrastructure, Sustainability. However, telemedicine could considerably show the impact on the entire healthcare industry in urban, community, international and even global settings. Administrative team may see the value in the expensive, possibly grueling and manner of telemedicine application. It would be a bit difficult for some hospital or health system executives to see the value proposition as every patient or every payor is not paying for telemedicine services. Only, through Telemedicine it is possible to consult a physician and patients acquire treatment miles away and offer specialists who do not live or work in the area.

Personalized e-Health is a healthcare ideal accentuating the systematic use of context information about an individual patient to optimize the patient's preventative and therapeutic care. A widespread ICT solutions for patient self-management includes medical sensor-enabled remote monitoring, smart-phone enabled data aggregation, medical situation awareness and analysis (risk classification, root cause analysis and risk triggers), and Diagnostics using Biosensors for converged disease risk management and patient behavior assistance toward prevention care or prediction of diseases for better disease risk control. Personalized eHealth market is becoming a significant socio-economic challenge around the world. For example, US alone spent about US$2.6 Trillion in 2008 (17% of GDP). Major world developed countries (US, EU and Japan) are promoting a new healthcare model, called personalized healthcare, to control the cost while improving citizens’ health through use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and care focus from treatment to prevention. Fundamentals in eHealth personalization, Personalized eHealth business models and eHealth and classical health networks included in the personalized e-Health indicate that business-to-consumers e-commerce models require real-time data that enable users to make informative decisions. E-health models have been categorized into four major frameworks (portals, connectivity, business-to-business, and business-to-consumer) and numerous others; provide patient–consumers with diverse capabilities including access to treatment and diagnostic information, online purchases of prescription drugs, and even personalization of health care plans that are enabled via employee-defined contribution plans.

Many patients feel uncomfortable to go to hospital or doctor-chamber. Mobile Telemedicine creates communication among patients & healthcare professionals maintaining convenience & commitment. Moreover, through Legal issues involved in Telemedicine the medical information and images are kept confidential and safely transferred from one place to another. So, people can believe this system and feel comfort to seek help from telemedicine. Implementation of Telemedicine in rural areas helped the patients residing in inaccessible areas or isolated regions. Patients can receive clinical healthcare from their home without arduous travel to the hospital. Remote patient monitoring, homecare applications through computer or tablet or phone technology has reduced outpatient visits. Now doctors can verify prescription or supervise drug oversight. Furthermore, the home-bound patients can seek medical-help without moving to clinic through ambulance. Thus, cost of health care has been reduced. Virtual clinical treatment decreases human interaction among the Health professionals and patient’s role and attitude towards e-Health that increases the risk of error in clinical services, if the service is delivered by inexperienced professional. Moreover, confidential medical information can be leaked through faulty electronic system. Applications of Telemedicine facilitates health education, as the primary level healthcare professionals can observe the working procedure of healthcare-experts in their respective fields and the experts can supervise the works of the novice and eliminates the possibility of transmitting infectious diseases between patients and healthcare professionals. Ethical issues involved in Telemedicine require tough legal regulation to prevent unauthorized and illegal service providers in this sector.

The Future of telemedicine will depend on: (1) human factors, (2) economics and (3) technology. Behaviors related to technology affect change at the individual, organizational and societal level. Personnel shortages and decreasing third-party reimbursement are significant drivers of technology-enabled health care in the industrialized world, particularly in the areas of home care and self-care. Technology has made it easy for doctors to detect various diseases. But it is restricted only to people in urban areas but Low cost Telemedicine made easy for people in rural areas with simple and standard healthcare infrastructure. Rapid growth in the availability of low-power, hand-held medical monitoring devices advanced the Telemedicine for poor and reduces travel costs by both parties for consultation, diagnosis, and follow up is the largest benefit. Steps that has to be taken to reach Telemedicine to common people include Create technology-neutral insurance payment policies, Adopt a standard definition for tele-health, Fund research to continually improve the quality and lower the cost of tele-health programs, Promote interoperability among state prescription drug monitoring programs. E-Health economics concerned with issues related to efficiency, effectiveness, value and behavior in the production and consumption of health and health care.