Telemedicine and e-Health in Disaster Response

elemedicine over the past several decades has been used effectively and judiciously in the aftermath of disasters caused by both humans and natural occurring events.Natural disasters cannot be predicted precisely as to where and when they will occur, although significant technology available today provides some levels of awareness or an alert to pending tornadic activity, the destructive path of hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquake fault zones.This awareness does little to prepare population centers other than to get as many people as possible to a safe location.This awareness capability differs significantly across the globe, and often parts of the developing world suffer larger loss of life and property as a result.Consider the recent earthquakes in Haiti, Japan, and Chile with respect to the destruction and devastation, and of course the needs of the population.With respect to disasters caused by humans such as industrial, nuclear, biological, or chemical, these are often precipitated by some egregious acts of ineptness, war, or terrorism.In industrial settings there may be a response plan to an accident that can precipitate into a disaster, but the community may be unaware of the true danger.Consider the fertilizer plant in Texas that blew up in the summer of 2013 or the gas explosion in Bopal, India in 1984.A medical response to these kinds of events is also varied depending on the location, region of the world, and resources.Telemedicine and e-health have been used both in preplanning and in post-disaster response.It can be a challenge to utilize telemedicine and e-health during or immediately following a disaster due to many factors, including telecommunications infrastructure and resource constraints.Over the past 20 years, this Journal has brought you several significant articles that have helped shape the discussion on telemedicine and e-health in disaster response.The knowledge from the work reported here comes from actual disaster response, the application of technology in disasters, or the manifestation of disease outbreak and how telemedicine has been of value.In all disasters, there is significant disruption of services and in many cases significant trauma.In 2011, Dr. Ronald Weinstein reviewed a wonderful text from Dr. Rifat Latifi entitled Telemedicine for Trauma Emergencies and Disaster Management. 1 This review highlighted the importance of this text as a tool for teaching and implementing telemedicine in support of disaster response.In 2007, the American Telemedicine Association Special Interest Group (SIG) on Emergency Preparedness and Response also developed an inventory of what capabilities were available.A white paper, prepared by Dave Balch, reported on the SIG's efforts to develop a framework and