Disease-a-month : DM
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Telemedicine has drawn increasing attention as one of the emerging service delivery vehicles running on the information highway. Until recently, the adoption of telemedicine has been discouraged by the cost of telecommunications and equipment and by the lack of infrastructure, standards, and evidence of cost-effectiveness and cultural acceptance. Although there have been attempts to reduce costs by making use of computer communication networks, they were technically limited by slow network speed and the lack of real-time audio/video compression technology. ⋯ However, there is still no proof that telemedicine is necessarily cost-effective for a broad set of applications. Each prospective application requires its own business case analysis. Within the current environment, the development of a telemedicine strategy should be based on a sound knowledge of the current and future potential of telemedicine to improve health care access and quality while containing and possibly reducing health care costs.
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The past decade has seen significant advances in the available treatments for asthma. These include longer-acting bronchodilating agents, high topical potency inhaled corticosteroids, and agents that interfere with leukotriene production or action. ⋯ Experimental therapies for the steroid-dependent patient have also been discussed. Although clinical trials to date have established many of these as effective in asthma, the results of ongoing, large, multicenter studies investigating the relative merits of these therapies, alone and in combination, will further clarify how to maximize the utility of these agents in the treatment of asthma.