Telemedicina En Mexico

Adoption of Telemedicine (mobile diagnosis units) in Mexico
Introduction
The term of ‘adoption’ not always make allusion to something new or something that has been proved to be good or beneficial. Adoption can be a choice or can be imposed by a trend or need. When we talk about technology is inevitable not to make reference to communication technology that has grown exponentially for the lastdecade opening new markets and globalizing any discipline of knowledge. Medicine is not the exception, where telemedicine, is a branch of the medicine created as a direct result of the application of ICT to the practice of medicine. The adoption of this new trend in medicine has to be a conscious informed decision, where strategic planning and a robust infrastructure are needed to succeed in thisdiscipline. A framework for the adoption of a specific use of telemedicine in rural isolated communities in Mexico is discussed in this paper.
Basic concepts on Telemedicine
Telemedicine is not a new or revolutionary concept, in a raw description, is the ability to practice medicine (health care) in a remote or distant environment. Stories about telemedicine practices exist since the beginningsof the past century where Einthover, in 1901 after developing the first string galvanometer for Electrocardiography started some research about the possibility to transmit the signal over a telephonic line (Geddes & Roeder, 2002). Many other applications of telemedicine took place over the years and until the earlier 80’s, this practice started to be considered of value as a daily practiceand not just in isolated circumstances. The National Aero Space Agency (NASA) in the United States of America developed the first biomedical telemetry device to monitor vital signs of astronauts in outer space. This event woke up the minds of governments and health providers to consider telemedicine as a viable option to bring health care to people in remote locations (Garcia, 2010).
In anotherpoint of view, in the theoretical panorama, literature about telemedicine exists since 1950’s, not specifically defined as telemedicine but referring of what telemedicine is in our days. In 1950, the first recognized publication with some terms like Telegnosis or Teleconsultation was found. In 1974 the term telemedicine was first used in MEDLINE database and during the next 24 years, around 48articles have been published in this database, while in the next 3 years more than 68 articles can be found around this topic describing a substantial publication increase on this medical branch (Zundel, 1996).
As we said before, telemedicine has been defined by different authors along the years (Cartwright, 2000; Nicolini, 2007) always based on the fact of the application of Information CommunicationTechnologies (ICT) into the Health Care field. Telemedicine application has taken majorly two streams. The first stream is the use of ICT to promote collaboration and education among healthcare staff and with patients and general public, in other words non-direct clinical activities. The other stream is the one related to provide a direct health service to patients regardless of the distance. Isimportant also to mention that the former stream mentioned can be classified in two modalities, real time telemedicine (synchronous) or storage and forward (asynchronous) (Menachemi, Burke & Ayers, 2004; Gherardi, 2010). In this paper we will focus on the second stream, defining a framework for the adoption of ICT for remote locations telemedicine in Mexico.
Telemedicine and InnovationTechnology has always been the metrics of human development, and whereases technology changing rate increases so the fields of science. We are now facing a point where technology evolution is overwhelming and ignoring the adoption rates inherent to humans, in other words, technology changes faster than the ability we have to use it and apply it into our full advantage. In the communication Information...