Telemedicine has always seemed like an obvious use of the online world – Skyping for your health, so to speak. It’s fun to think of the technical possibilities – a nurse or doctor “examining” you from far away via remote-control robotics, for example.
But it’s not used all that much, and not because of technical limits. The problem is regulatory and financial: There’s little history on how nurses, doctors, therapists, hospitals can be paid to do it, or how it’s covered by insurance, or how liability would apply.
So a boring new law that allows New Hampshire Medicaid to cover telemedicine for primary care is actually important because it can help free up the geeky developments. You can read more about it here.