The history of the Telemedicine development has gone in the close parallel to the history of communication and information technologies. As the ultimate goal and the technical prerequisite of telemedicine is the ability to communicate medical data over a distance.
Telemedicine in it’s primitive form was practiced in ancient times. As an example, news about an outbreak of a dangerous disease could be sent over long distance using a variety of media channels besides human messengers: fires, smoke signals, drums, horns etc.
Modern Telemedicine as we know it gained momentum with the advent of technology. First inventions that gave rise to Telemedicine were the telegraph and the telephone. With these media almost anyone could send a message or make a call. Telegraph was widely used in military situations due to the speed.
Telephone brought the era of the connected world. Major city hospitals and doctor offices installed telephones and within a few years, many city residents also had telephones in their homes. Therefore medical advice could be given directly to patients.
These days most of us prefer asynchronous communication methods, such as text messages but the telephone was the foundation for many communication and telemedicine technologies. The historycan be divided into 2 parts: Telemedicine 1.0 and Telemedicine 2.0