RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Telemedicine, i.e. the set of diagnostic, terapheutic or social medicine actions, done using electronic transmission methods, is thieving and shows an amazing and disquieting near future. Let us review the actual situation and analyze the future perspectives. DEVELOPMENT: It is now a reality in different scopes and centres such as Teleradiology, Telepathology, Teleophthalmology, and so, and terms like Telepresence or Robotic Surgery, are making its way. Meanwhile, by now, Internet doesn't support critical applications where the patient's life is at risk, the boom of telecommunications at planetary level is changing our habits and rhythms, ... our lifes. It's the immediate transmission of information without intermediaries being able of manipulate it, it's the universal, easy, free and immediate communication between persons. A media without government, without censure, hard to legislate, that implies the fading out of diverse social beings that are nowadays under constraints of time and space, and the fading in of new beings free of that sort of constraints. We are seeing the born and growing up of a new culture that will impose itself-it is already doing so-like it has happened before with the press, or vaccines. It is in our hands to cooperate in the positive development of these new technologies, of this new culture, and to protect it from irresponsible governments, from unscrupulous commercials, and from the people trying to convert it in new social barriers. But we have reasons to be optimist, one of them is the existence of a lot of intelligent, passionated, usually very young people, extremely experts in computer science and communications, that are working hard in these fields, knowing that the ones who have the control of communications will rulethe future world. CONCLUSIONS: It is important that telemedicine helps improving medical sciences, the patients, the doctor and the society and we can-we must-work to this end.
