David A. Conner

Issues and Techniques in Networked-Based Distributed Healthcare: Overview

For telemedicine to reach its potential in the Internet2 environment,significant progress must be made in a number of areas. The emergingtelecommunications will include the Internet2 between medicalinstitutions and emerging broadband loop and wireless technologiesfor interconnections to homes. Within the technical environment,problems that must be addressed include the development of robotic-controlled,remote-monitoring devices unique to the various medical specialties;the encoding, transmission, and decoding of raw data specificto the specialized needs of various medical application areas;and the reduction of data for storage and retrieval in patientrecords. Institutionally, human factor and information accessissues with respect to physicians, patients, and non-physicianhealthcare providers must be addressed; healthcare insuranceprovider policies, government regulation, and state licensinglaws must be adapted for a new paradigm of healthcare delivery;and the philosophy of capital investment for the delivery ofhealthcare must be revised.Many current practiceswill be supplanted by home healthcare alternatives, the use ofpatient-initiated preventive healthcare initiatives, and remote-clinicactivity. These applications will result in central record archivingsystems; the need for encryption schemes, virus protection, andvandalism protection; extensive, additional connectivity betweenhealthcare providers and professionals; and new commercial “players”in the healthcare arena.The “hot” applicationareas will include womens health, childrens health, healthcarefor senior citizens, home healthcare, well-patient monitoring,and early-detection of medical problems.

Editorial: Undergraduate education

ON JULY 1, I retired from my university position. As I approached retirement, I began thinking about the academic environments that had consumed the major portion of my 41-year professional life. As I reflected upon my experiences, my primary attention was focused on my first love, undergraduate engineering education, and several questions came to mind. The purpose of this editorial is to raise these same questions in your mind, give you a few of my thoughts, and, hopefully, get you thinking about the future of undergraduate education.

Editor-in-Chief's Reply - Comments on "Undergraduate education" editorial appearing in November 2002 issue

The Director of Engineering Programs here at Seattle Pacific University (SPU) recently distributed to the engineering faculty your editorial entitled “Undergraduate Education” from the November 2002 issue of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ONEDUCATION. Having recently, like yourself, retired after over four decades in electrical engineering, I found the editorial very interesting and decided to respond with my personal opinions relative to your conclusions. The significant difference in our two careers is that my tenure was spent in industry with various academic positions only during the last decade. I also obtained my undergraduate electrical engineering training utilizing vacuum tubes. In agreement with you, I found that that training provided me with the ability to undertake any technical problem with a logical and disciplined approach. The specific vehicle to provide this ability (vacuum tubes) was appropriate at that time—as a mature technical discipline in heavy usage. To have tried to utilize a “state-of-the-art” vehicle, such as transistors, would have only introduced poor-quality instructional materials. The undergraduate educational system must wait to see how a field develops before it embraces it as a basic study sequence. In my graduate work, I was fortunate enough to become involved in transistors. A compatriot of mine undertook his graduate studies in magnetic amplifiers. Both subjects seemed to hold great promise for the future; however, as I am sure you are aware, magnetic amplifiers had a very short life cycle compared with transistors. To have based an undergraduate study sequence on magnetic amplifiers would have been a disservice to the students. Developing technology should be introduced to the extent that it allows the undergraduate student visibility. Also, it must be remembered that when a company hires an individual with a recent engineering bachelor degree, the probability that the initial assignment will be in an explicit topic that the recent graduate had taken in engineering school is very remote. The company is looking for a motivated and engineering-intelligent individual who is willing and able to “get up to speed” on the specific discipline involved. If a specific talent is immediately required, an industrial organization will hire either an experienced person or an individual with an advanced degree in the desired topic. Your concern relative to starting an engineering study “with calculus, calculus-based physics, and chemistry” is unfounded. From these beginnings, a good foundation is laid for whatever way the engineering students’ paths lead. Using your examples, chemistry forms the basis for a deeper understanding of cellular biology (on the route to medical electronics), and physics provides a solid foundation for optics (on the route to light-pipe data transmittal). Also, your concern about the Accreditation Board for Engineering & Technology’s “touchy–feely” goals are unfounded. The objective is not