Information technology that is developed with the benefit of the community in mind, in relation to telemedicine.
Published in Chapter:
Telemedicine and Information Technology for Disaster Medical Scenarios
John D. Haynes (Charles Darwin University, Australia), Mehnaz Saleem (Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan), and Moona Kanwal (Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-889-5.ch163
Abstract
Disasters constitute events which are catastrophic in nature. Such events critically threaten the health, safety, and lives of people and their environment (and even aspects of the global environment), and as a result, overwhelm the affected community’s emergency response capacity. Globally, a major disaster occurs almost daily. Consequently, disaster events are virtually an everyday fact of life. Emergency medical services constitute one important aspect of disaster responses. Those populations affected by disasters require a complete range of health services and the appropriate mechanism of delivery. In this respect, increasingly, information technology is playing a greater role. Disaster medicine has become more than merely a mass-casualty, and affected health response; the affected population’s needs are assessed, which range from medical requirements, to rapidly coordinating and providing casualty, routine, and preventive health services. These kinds of assessments are significantly more effective, given the appropriate deployment of current information technology.