A Suitable, Efficient, and Low Cost Telecommunication Solution for Telemedicine for Northeastern Region of Thailand Remote Rural Areas

Abstract

The development of information technology and telecommunication leads to the emergence of telemedicine. Telemedicine provides medical diagnosis and treatment to people in remote areas via telecommunication technology. It could alleviate the problem of lack of expert or physician in distant locations. Thus it can help improving the quality of life not only for city people, but also for people who live in the remote rural areas. One of the core technologies required for telemedicine system is telecommunication, which is also a focus of this paper.
Exploring telecommunication to support telemedicine system must be useful for Thai citizen especially for people in Northeastern Thailand where it is known that most of populations are poor and the number of hospital or health centre comparing to number of population in such region is very low.
In this paper, the review about resent telemedicine related researches, technologies used for telemedicine, some existing telemedicine projects, and interesting issues to concern of implementing telemedicine system can be found. The methodology of exploring suitable, efficient, and low cost telecommunication solution supporting telemedicine for northeastern region of Thailand, which is the purpose of this research, is discussed. The possible future research in
telemedicine can be also found at the end of this paper.