English for Bio-Medical Engineers (self-study competence development). Учебное пособие

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9 Unit 9. Telemedicine

9.1 Text A. Telemedicine

9.1.1 Memorize the following words and word-groups from the texts of the unit:

9.1.2 Read the following words and word-combinations:

telemedicine, remote medical procedures, satellite technology, care, absentia care, metamorphosed, e-health, telehealth, electronic medical records.

9.1.3 Read and translate the text using the dictionary. Be ready to speak on the

topic.

Telemedicine is a rapidly developing application of clinical medicine where medical information is transferred via telephone, the Internet or other networks for the purpose of consulting, and sometimes remote medical procedures or examinations.

Telemedicine may be as simple as two health professionals discussing a case over the telephone, or as complex as using satellite technology and video-conferencing equipment to conduct a real-time consultation between medical specialists in two different countries. Telemedicine generally refers to the use of communications and information technologies for the delivery of clinical care.

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Care at a distance (also called in absentia care), is an old practice which was often conducted via post; there has been a long and successful history of in absentia health care, which - thanks to modern communication technology - has metamorphosed into what we know as modern telemedicine.

In its early manifestations, African villagers used smoke signals to warn people to stay away from the village in case of serious disease. In the early 1900s, people living in remote areas in Australia used two-way radios, powered by a dynamo driven by a set of bicycle pedals, to communicate with the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia.

The terms e-health and telehealth are at times wrongly interchanged with telemedicine. Like the terms "medicine" and "health care", telemedicine often refers only to the provision of clinical services while the term telehealth can refer to clinical and nonclinical services such as medical education, administration, and research. The term e- health is often, particularly in the UK and Europe, used as an umbrella term that includes telehealth, electronic medical records, and other components of health IT.

9.1.4 Answer the questions:

1 What is telemedicine?

2What does telemedicine generally refer to?

3How was absentia care conducted?

4What has absentia health care metamorphosed into?

5What changes has absentia health care undergone?

6What does the term telemedicine often refer to?

7What does the term telehealth often refer to?

8What does the term e-health include?

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9.2 Text B. Types of Telemedicine

9.2.1 Memorize the following words and word-groups from the texts of the unit:

9.2.2 Read the following words and word-combinations:

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synchronous, asynchronous, store-and-forward, peripheral devices, interaction, realtime, surgery, tele-otoscope, psychiatry, obstetrics, rehabilitation, pathology and pharmacy, bandwidth, capabilities, beneficial, telecardiology, general practitioner, resuscitation, blood pressure monitors.

9.2.3 Read and translate the text using the dictionary. Be ready to speak on the

topic.

Types of Telemedicine are practiced on the basis of two concepts: real time (synchronous) and store-and-forward and Home Health (asynchronous).

Real time telemedicine could be as simple as a telephone call or as complex as robotic surgery. It requires the presence of both parties at the same time and a communications link between them that allows a real-time interaction to take place. Video-conferencing equipment is one of the most common forms of technologies used in synchronous telemedicine. There are also peripheral devices which can be attached to computers or the video-conferencing equipment which can aid in an interactive examination. For instance, a tele-otoscope allows a remote physician to 'see' inside a patient's ear; a tele-stethoscope allows the consulting remote physician to hear the patient's heartbeat. Medical specialties conducive to this kind of consultation include psychiatry, family practice, internal medicine, rehabilitation, cardiology, pediatrics, obstetrics, neurology, speech-language pathology and pharmacy.

Store-and-forward telemedicine involves acquiring medical data (like medical images, biosignals etc) and then transmitting this data to a doctor or medical specialist at a convenient time for assessment offline. It does not require the presence of both parties at the same time. Dermatology (cf: teledermatology), radiology, and pathology are common specialties that are conducive to asynchronous telemedicine. A properly structured Medical Record preferably in electronic form should be a component of this transfer.

When a patient is in the hospital and he is placed under general observation after a surgery or other medical procedure, the hospital is usually losing a valuable bed and the patient would rather not be there as well. Home health allows the remote observation and

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care of a patient. Home health equipment consists of vital signs capture, video conferencing capabilities, and patient stats can be reviewed and alarms can be set from the hospital nurse's station, depending on the specific home health device. Usually low bandwidth analog Plain Old Telephone System (POTS). Some newer systems do support higher bandwidth capabilities. Disease management, post-hospital care, assisted living, etc.

Telemedicine is most beneficial for populations living in isolated communities and remote regions and is currently being applied in virtually all medical domains. Specialties that use telemedicine often use a "tele-" prefix; for example, telemedicine as applied by radiologists is called Teleradiology. Similarly telemedicine as applied by cardiologists is termed as telecardiology, etc.

Telemedicine is also useful as a communication tool between a general practitioner and a specialist available at a remote location.

The first interactive Telemedicine system, operating over standard telephone lines, for remotely diagnosing and treating patients requiring cardiac resuscitation (defibrillation) was developed and marketed by MedPhone Corporation in 1989. A year latter the company introduced a mobile cellular version, the MDphone. Twelve hospitals in the U.S. served as receiving and treatment centers.

Monitoring a patient at home using known devices like blood pressure monitors and transferring the information to a caregiver is a fast growing emerging service. These remote monitoring solutions have a focus on current high morbidity chronic diseases and are mainly deployed for the First World. In developing countries a new way of practicing telemedicine is emerging better known as Primary Remote Diagnostic Visits whereby a doctor uses devices to remotely examine and treat a patient. This new technology and principle of practicing medicine holds big promises to solving major health care delivery problems in for instance Southern Africa because Primary Remote Diagnostic Consultations not only monitors an already diagnosed chronic disease, but has the promise to diagnosing and managing the diseases a patient will typically visit a general practitioner for.

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9.2.4 Answer the questions in the full form:

1 What basis is Telemedicine practiced on?

2 What could real time telemedicine be?

3 How does simple/complex telemedicine operate?

4 What do medical specialties conducive to the remote consultation include?

5What does store-and-forward telemedicine involve?

6What does home health allow?

7What does home health equipment consist of?

8What kind of population is telemedicine most beneficial for? 9 How did the interactive telemedicine system develop?

10 What does this new technology and principle of practicing medicine hold?

9.2.5 Speak on the topic “Telemedicine”.

9.3 Text C. Teleradiology

9.3.1 Memorize the following words and word-groups from the texts of the unit:

9.3.2Read the following words and word-combinations:

9.3.3Read and translate the text without a dictionary and say how it is connected with the Text 9.2.3.

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Teleradiology is the ability to send radiographic images (x-rays) from one location to another. For this process to be implemented, three essential components are required, an image sending station, a transmission network, and a receiving / image review station. The most typical implementation are two computers connected via Internet. The computer at the receiving end will need to have a high-quality display screen that has been tested and cleared for clinical purposes. Sometimes the receiving computer will have a printer so that images can be printed for convenience.

The teleradiology process begins at the image sending station. The radiographic image and a modem or other connection are required for this first step. The image is scanned and then sent via the network connection to the receiving computer.

An example of teleradiology is the EU-funded project R-Bay. One of the major providers for teleradiology services in Europe is Telemedicine Clinic.

9.3.4 Summarize the information given in the unit.

10 Unit 10. Short history of fiber optics

10.1 Text A. Short history of fiber optics

10.1.1 Memorize the following words and word-groups from the texts of the unit:

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10.1.2 Read the following words and word-combinations:

human operator, hand-carried messages, scatter, visible legacy, languish, intervening years physicist, jest of water, transparent, flexible, facsimile systems, unclad fibers, inaccessible.

10.1.3 Read and translate the text using the dictionary.

Optical communication systems date back two centuries, to the "optical telegraph" that French engineer Claude Chappe invented in the 1790s. His system was a series of semaphores mounted on towers, where human operators relayed messages from one tower to the next. It beat hand-carried messages hands down, but by the mid-19th century was replaced by the electric telegraph, leaving a scattering of "Telegraph Hills" as its most visible legacy.

Alexander Graham Bell patented an optical telephone system, which he called the Photophone, in 1880, but his earlier invention, the telephone, proved far more practical. He dreamed of sending signals through the air, but the atmosphere didn't transmit light as reliably as wires carried electricity. In the decades that followed, light was used for a few special applications, such as signalling between ships, but otherwise optical communications, like the experimental Photophone Bell donated to the Smithsonian Institution, Languished on the shelf.

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In the intervening years, a new technology slowly took root that would ultimately solve the problem of optical transmission, although it was a long time before it was adapted for communications. It depended on the phenomenon of total internal reflection, which can confine light in a material surrounded by other materials with lower refractive index, such as glass in air. In 1840s, Swiss physicist Daniel Collodon and French physicist Jacques Babinet showed that light could be guided along jest of water for fountain displays. British physicist John Tyndall popularized light guiding in a demonstration he first used in 1854, guiding light in a jet of water flowing from a tank. By the turn of the century, inventors realized that bent quartz rods could carry light, and patented them as dental illuminators. By the 1940s, many doctors used illuminated plexiglass tongue depressors.

Optical fibers went a step further. They are essentially transparent rods of glass or plastic stretched so they are long and flexible. During the 1920s, John Logie Baird in England and Clarence. Hansell in the LESSONed States patented the idea of using arrays of hollow pipes or transparent rods to transmit images for television or facsimile systems. However, the first person known to have demonstrated image transmission through a bundle of optical fibers was Heinrich Lamm, than a medical student in Munich. His goal was to look inside inaccessible parts of the body, and in a 1930 paper he reported transmitting the image of a light bulb filament through a short bundle. However, the unclad fibers transmitted images poorly, and the rise of the Nazis forced Lamm, a Jew, to move to America and abandon his dreams of becoming a professor of medicine.

10.1.4 Speak on the main stages in fiber optics development.

10.2 Text B. Optical Technology

10.2.1 Memorize the following words and word-groups from the texts of the unit:

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