Digital tools let doctors see patients via Internet

Thanks to factors including a looming physician shortage, the health care reform debate and the increasing willingness of insurance companies to pay for the practice, telehealth is on the verge of becoming routine. In the near future you could be connected by video to a specialist dozens or hundreds of miles away. Consider something as mundane as a skin rash. If your primary care doctor thinks she needs outside expertise, she can use digital diagnostic tools to generate high-resolution images of the rash and beam them to a dermatologist in another office for rapid diagnosis. Remote consultation and diagnosis are ways for medicine to become more efficient even as physicians and other health professionals are increasingly in short supply, policy experts say. For patients living away from advanced hospitals in urban areas, they add, it's potentially lifesaving. Telehealth systems can screen patients for diabetes, eye disease, kidney problems, nerve damage, vascular disease and complicated pregnancies. The technology is available and relatively inexpensive. It's the regulatory hurdles that present the challenge, experts say.