Technology companies, including those in the mobile industry, need to work more closely with the medical establishment to realise the potential benefits of telemedicine, according to the IEEE, the trade association for electrical and electronics engineers. Dr Yongmin Kim (pictured), IEEE fellow and professor of bioengineering and electrical engineering at the University of Washington, argues that advances such as faster wireless networks are now in place but technical innovation is not enough to ensure widespread use of telemedicine. “We now need to make it easier for the healthcare providers to embrace and apply these technologies in diverse medical environments,” he advised.

Another IEEE fellow, Dr Yuan-Ting Zhang, the founding director of the division of biomedical engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, added that successful deployment of telemedicine also needs the involvement of government in the form of health policy, regulation and reimbursement.

And Dr Yadin David, an IEEE senior member and founder of the centre for telehealth and e-health law in Washington DC, said technology companies and healthcare providers must agree on performance standards for telemedicine services, along with a common language to talk about them. “We need to translate technical criteria into the clinical domain to make it easier for healthcare providers to relate to it,” he said.

The IEEE is promoting greater dialogue between the IT industry and medical world ahead of the association’s medical technology conference run jointly with the American Medical Association later this year.