Telemedicine: have technological advances improved health care to remote Antarctic populations?

Telemedicine has been used in remote areas for decades. In recent years the information superhighway has been a catalyst for the rapid growth of telemedicine; development of new technologies; and proliferation of subspecialties, journals and abstracts, and centers for telemedicine law. It has further promoted conferences of clinicians and managers planning telemedicine to advance remote health care, as well as the generation of revenue from business opportunities. This "rediscovered" telemedicine is seen by many as the answer to the unavailability of professional health care in geographically isolated areas. Failures of some well established networks and the high costs of establishing and running others have stimulated calls for thorough evaluations to be made, especially of the use of appropriate technology rather than the latest and most sophisticated. I review here 50 years of telemedicine in Antarctica and make an assessment of its role in the improvement of health care services.