Overview

Novel technologies have been recently developed to simply and inexpensively communicate across the internet. These technologies have improved our ability to communicate among regional collaborators, and enabled telemedicine outreach clinics and inpatient consultations convenient and effective. Ultimately, the technologies hold the promise removing the barrier of distance in access to genetic care and minimize the problem of insufficient numbers of genetic services professionals by making access to their expertise available to larger numbers of patients without respect to geography.  The Telecommunication/Telemedicine Workgroup was formed to investigage the use of these technologies and to identifiy ways of implementing their use for improved patient care.