Future delivery of health care: Cybercare

Abstract

Health-care system reforms can change the structure of the current U.S. health-care system, from centralized large hospitals to a distributed, networked healthcare system. In our model, medical care is delivered locally in neighborhoods and individual homes, using computer technologies like telemedicine, to link patients and primary care providers to tertiary medical providers. This decentralization could reduce costs enough to provide all citizens with medical insurance coverage; it would benefit patients and providers; and as a dual-use system, it would better protect the country's resources and citizens in an event of biological terror or natural disasters.