Health care-oriented telecommunications: the wave of the future.

This article has examined the impact that telecommunications technologies may have on the way in which health care services are delivered. A number of scenarios of how that might occur were discussed. Some of these scenarios are already being realized. Telemedicine, for instance, is being used in certain geographic regions of the United States. Various community health information networks are in the developmental stages or at varying degrees of operability. Two such networks in Colorado and Wisconsin were offered as examples. The impact of these developments on confidentiality and security of patient information, issues central to the responsibilities of health information managers, has been discussed. These technological advancements will have consequences for health information managers in other ways, too. The types of tasks that are performed and how those tasks are performed related to storing and retrieving information will be different in the future. In the transition period, blurring of job functions may occur as different types of practitioners strive to carve their niche in the electronic environment. For instance, as electronic patient records are linked to bibliographic databases of medical literature, where do the responsibilities of health information managers end and medical librarians begin? The best way to ensure a position on the health care team of the future is to recognize the opportunities provided by this dynamic period in health care.