Internet – in Health Industry

The popular press tends to focus on the growing use of the Internet to support consumer health via health-related Web sites that provide information on specific diseases, contain guidance on healthy lifestyles, host chat and support groups, and sell a range of health-related products. Government programs tend to focus on using networking of various kinds to support telemedicine, especially in rural and underserved areas. These applications represent just a small sampling of the ways the Internet can be used to support health and health care. Many other applications exist in public health, biomedical research, health care finance and administration, and the maintenance of electronic health records. Each of these applications demands different capabilities of its underlying networks, whether high-bandwidth connections, rapid delivery of data, tight security, reliability, or widespread access. The existing Internet cannot support them all.