The wired health system: telemedicine comes of age

Telemedicine is no longer pie-in-the-sky technology, but already at work saving hefty sums of money and improving care in the clinical setting. Through a cable television system in Kansas, nurse practitioners are able to see up to four times as many patients as is possible with in-person home care visits. And at Boston's Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, premature babies are monitored by a device that works over the Internet, avoiding the $2,000 per day cost of the neonatal ICU.