High Time to Discuss Future-Oriented Telemedicine

features past achievements directly analyzed by the research team of Prof. Ahn, who was responsible for research into the telemedicine program in Gangwon Province, which has the longest history in Korea and has been evaluated as the country’s most successful program [1]. Other papers cover issues pertaining to the management of chronic diseases by using a QI and agent operated through mobile Electronic Health Records (EHR) and mobile applications and to the security framework in telemedicine through the Internet of Things (IoT). Finally, the case report introduces some studies on wearable devices, which have been one of the most interesting topics among the public. I can say with confidence that this special issue will offer a rare opportunity to access, in a single copy of this journal, diverse issues encompassing the past and the present, international trends and unique circumstances in Korea, and PC-based telemedicine delivered by mobile device, agents, the IoT, and wearable device. The articles in this issue tell us that telemedicine goes beyond the readily available image of real-time, face-to-face medical treatment mediated by screens. In the early days of telemedicine, a considerable effort was made to realize the ‘real-time’ and ‘face-to-face’ aspects, despite technological restrictions such as slow network speed and poor hardware specifications. Therefore, studies on early telemedicine largely focused on addressing such technological restraints [2-5]. Those restrictions, however, were mostly solved by the development of information and communications technology, and a number of things that had not been possible became reality, which will be described in detail in this special issue (Vol. 21, No. 4). Nevertheless, the government and politicians tend to believe that telemedicine is all about ‘real-time’ and ‘face-toface’ interaction. In fact, telemedicine must be performed in real time and via face-to-face interaction in some cases, High Time to Discuss Future-Oriented Telemedicine