In 1874, a surgeon in South Australia telegraphed wound care directions for a affected person 2,000 kilometres away. A couple of years later, in 1879, a letter in The Lancet medical journal recommended physicians use the phone to chop down on pointless affected person visits.
As the phone and telegraph unfold, the thought of telemedicine – actually “therapeutic at a distance” – impressed science fiction writers to conjure up new methods of treating sufferers throughout nice distances.
Actual-world know-how has developed in tandem with scifi hypothesis ever since. Immediately, sure sorts of telemedicine have develop into commonplace, whereas different futuristic instruments are within the offing.
The radio physician and the teledactyl
In his 1909 brief story The Machine Stops, English novelist E.M. Forster described a telemedicine equipment that, when telegraphed, descends from the ceiling to look after sufferers within the consolation of their dwelling. His story can also be the earliest description of prompt messaging and a type of web – each vital for real-life telemedicine.
In 1924, Radio Information journal printed a canopy story displaying the longer term “Radio Physician”. The quilt depicts a doctor inspecting a affected person by a display. Though the journal story itself was a weird fiction that had little to do with a radio physician, the imagery is evocative.
In a 1925 cowl story for Science and Invention, US author Hugo Gernsback describes a tool known as “The Teledactyl” (from tele, which means far, and dactyl, which means finger). The gadget makes use of radio transmitters and tv screens to permit a physician to work together with a affected person. The added twist – the doctor touches the affected person utilizing a remotely managed mechanical hand arrange within the affected person’s dwelling.
Gernsback was a futurist and pioneer in radio and electrical engineering. Nicknamed the “Father of Science Fiction”, Gernsback used fictional tales to coach readers on science and know-how, and infrequently included in depth scientific particulars in his writings. He helped set up science fiction as a literary style, and the annual Hugo Awards are named after him.
From seafarers to spacefarers
The radio was vital for early telemedicine. Within the Nineteen Twenties, physicians throughout the globe began utilizing the radio to judge, diagnose, deal with, and supply medical recommendation for sick or wounded seafarers and passengers. The radio remains to be used to offer medical session to ships at sea.
In 1955, Gernsback returned to the thought of distance drugs with “The Teledoctor”. This imaginary gadget makes use of the phone and a closed-circuit tv with mechanical arms managed by the doctor to offer distant affected person care. Gernsback stated the physician of the longer term “will have the ability to do virtually something by teledoctoring that he can do in particular person”.
In 1959, psychiatrists in Nebraska began utilizing two-way closed-circuit televisions to conduct psychiatric consultations between two areas. That is thought-about one of many first examples of modern-day telemedicine. Early telemedicine networks have been costly to develop and preserve, which restricted broader use.
Within the Nineteen Sixties, NASA started efforts to combine telemedicine into each human spaceflight program. By 1971, a telemedicine system was prepared for trial on Earth – within the House Know-how Utilized to Rural Papago Superior Healthcare (STARPAHC) program. Utilizing a two-way tv and radio connection and distant telemetry, this system linked Tohono O’odham folks (then often known as Papago) with nurses and physicians a whole lot of miles away.
The web and a pandemic
It wasn’t till 1970 that the phrase telemedicine was formally coined by US physician Thomas Hen. Hen and his colleagues arrange an audiovisual circuit between the Massachusetts Common Hospital and Logan Airport to offer medical consultations to airport workers.
From the Seventies onward, telemedicine began gaining extra traction. The web, formally born in 1983, introduced new methods to attach sufferers and physicians.
Satellites may join physicians and sufferers throughout higher distances with out the necessity for two-way closed-circuit televisions. The price to develop and preserve a telemedicine community decreased within the Eighties, opening the door to wider adoption.
In his 1999 science fiction novel Starfish, Canadian author Peter Watts describes a tool known as the “Medical Mantis”. This gadget permits a doctor to remotely study and carry out procedures on sufferers deep beneath the ocean’s floor. Within the early 2000s, NASA’s Excessive Surroundings Mission Operations began testing teleoperated surgical robots in undersea environments.
Join free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the newest in African information delivered straight to your inbox
The evolution of telemedicine has saved tempo with advances in data and communication know-how. But, all through the Nineties and early 2000s, telemedicine remained little used.
It took the worldwide COVID pandemic to make telemedicine an integral a part of fashionable healthcare. Most of that is consultations by way of video name – not so far-off from what Gernsback envisioned a century, although to this point with out the robotic palms.
What’s subsequent? One probably issue pushing real-world telemedicine to match the desires of science fiction might be developments in human spaceflight.
As people progress in area exploration, the way forward for telemedicine could look extra like science fiction. Earth-based monitoring of astronauts’ well being would require technological breakthroughs to maintain tempo with them as they journey deeper into area.
Debbie Passey, Digital Well being Analysis Fellow, The College of Melbourne
