Broadband multimedia for education

Abstract

Over the next five to ten years the accelerating development of computing and broadband networks will lead to a revolution in the ways in which healthcare is delivered. Patients will spend less time in the great institutions of the tertiary hospitals and the illnesses taking them there will assume a different pattern. The new information technologies will foster the emergence of general practices with a new emphasis on keeping patients in their communities for medical management. Knowledge exchange and delivery—to both patient and practitioner—will therefore become an increasingly important component of the health-care system in the next millennium.