Successful clinical telemedicine applications rely heavily on the clarity of medical images and data collected during the patient encounter.

If doctors cant get accurate measurements and test results from their patients at a distance, then the patient must come in to see them face to face.

As telemedicine has advanced, so too has the digital medical peripherals market.

For example, in terms of measuring here are some of the different types of Diagnostic Equipment used by doctors in a Telemedicine consultation:

Digital Otoscope – for visual examination of the eardrum and the passage of the outer ear

Digital Dermascope – allow clinicians to determine the surgical margin for skin cancers that are difficult to define.

Digital Ophthalmoscope – an instrument for inspecting the retina and other parts of the eye.

Digital Laparscope – a fiber-optic instrument inserted through the abdominal wall to view the organs in the abdomen

Digital Sinuscope – used to examine nasal and sinus passages.

Digital Stethoscope – a medical instrument for listening to the action of someone’s heart or breathing

Digital ECG – An electrocardiogram is where electrodes are placed on the skin of the chest and connected in a specific order to a machine that measures electrical activity all over the heart.

Digital Ultrasound – an imaging method that uses high-frequency sound waves to produce images of structures within your body.

All of these devices can send data and images electronically either over an internet connection or directly into a telemedicine enabled device.

When using digital medical peripherals, it is important to comply with both HIPAA and the Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM). This is a standard for communications among medical imaging devices; a set of protocols describing how images are identified and formatted that is vendor-independent and developed by the American College of Radiology and the National Electronic Manufacturers Association.