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Telehealth and Telemedicine

Telehealth is the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health and health administration. 

Technologies used in telehealth typically are: videoconferencing, the Internet, store-and-forward imaging, streaming media, and terrestrial and wireless communications. While new applications are increasingly found for using these technologies, significant barriers remain to making these technologies an integral part of daily health care practice.

When you visit the websites of these government agencies or organizations, you will be leaving the Federal Communications Commission's website. If you have questions concerning the information contained on these sites, please contact the specific government agency.

Indian Health Service (IHS)
Telemedicine and Telehealth Projects
www.ihs.gov/nonmedicalprograms/dfee/telemed/default.cfm?content=coverpage.html
The Indian Health Service is moving rapidly in deploying state-of-the-art technology to bring primary care and specialty medicine to remote locations to reduce geographic barriers between remote, smaller communities and health care providers.

Office for the Advancement of Telehealth
www.hrsa.gov/telehealth/
The Office for the Advancement of Telehealth is a leader in telehealth, and a catalyst for the wider adoption of advanced technologies supporting health care services and education. The OAT Grant Program has helped increase access to quality health care services for the underserved by promoting the use of advanced telecommunications and information technologies by rural health care providers. 

Tribal Connections
www.Tribalconnections.org
Tribalconnections.org continues to be a valuable database for health related resources for Native Americans and Alaska Natives. Tribal Connections is attempting to do two things: first, to provide reader-friendly information about critical issues or topics in the news related to Native American health. We hope to make available information that will be interesting to both health professionals and to consumer health information seekers. Secondly, it wants to help raise awareness of Native American health issues in the general population and among Native Americans and Alaska Natives themselves by promoting Native American health writing, an area that has generally been overlooked by the major media. Within its website you can find information about tribal telehealth and learn how telecommunication technology is used for telemedicine and telehealth applications.

National Library of Medicine
National Telemedicine Initiative
www.nlm.nih.gov/research/telemedinit.html
The National Library of Medicine collects and indexes literature related to telemedicine and provides information on grants and contracts awarded by major public and private funding agencies in the area of telemedicine. 

Rural Health Care Program
www.universalservice.org/rhc/
Rural Health Care is a universal service support mechanism authorized by Congress and designed by the Federal Communications Commission to provide reduced rates to rural Health 

American Telemedicine Association 
www.atmeda.org
The American Telemedicine Association is the leading resource and advocate promoting access to medical care for consumers and health professionals via telecommunications technology. ATA seeks to bring together diverse groups from traditional medicine, academic medical centers, technology and telecommunications companies, e-health, medical societies, government and others to overcome barriers to the advancement of telemedicine through the professional, ethical and equitable improvement in health care delivery.