Thank you for your comments + Additional Information

Friends,

First of all, I want to thank you for your comments and suggestions. I have spent most of yesterday and today responding to the comments that I have received through various channels. The vast majority of the comments are supportive of the theme of my Wall Street Journal article.

Patients from foreign countries have been seen by doctors in the US for many decades. They come to the US for surgery and other medical reasons. Further, US doctors give professional opinions to patients abroad after looking at their medical records. The Arizona Telemedicine Initiative (ATP) enables doctors in Tucson to assist patients (including persons in prisons) in Arizona and neighboring states; the same capability is sometimes used to assist patients outside the US. (Details of different forms of telemedicine were highlighted by the pioneers of ATP in a paper in the IBM Systems Journal and in other publications.) It is only recently that the reverse phenomenon has become applicable.

On the issue of radiology, significant research on the pros and cons of teleradiology has been conducted by Professor Sanjay Saini and his colleagues at the Department of Radiology, Harvard University and Mass General Hospital. These individuals have looked at the practice of radiology from multiple perspectives. You can read about the results of his research in the article published by him and his co-authors in the April-June 2007 issue of the Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations.

From the viewpoint of organizational dynamics, change is very difficult and painful. We all want change to occur, but we don't want to change ourselves. This is also true in the medical arena.
You can access details of our research and findings in the papers and reports via:

http://next.eller.arizona.edu/publications/ssrn/index.aspx

You can also access several of the papers written by my students on various issues, including different types of healthcare issues, at:

http://next.eller.arizona.edu/publications/recent/

Additional material can be accessed from:

http://next.eller.arizona.edu/

I am providing the above links to assist readers who have requested for advice on specific segments of healthcare.

Initiating change is difficult; managing it is even more. There is a tendency to blame problems that occur to the change, even though they may be entirely unrelated to the process of change. For example, a person may try to blame the recent economic woes of Wall Street to the process of outsourcing in the financial industry; however, there is no evidence to support this assertion.

The US is a major proponent of free trade. Until the time we pursue this paradigm in the US, we need to think of this as a two-way street and leverage it to mutual advantage. Doctors are in short supply in foreign countries too!

Sincerely,


Dr. Amar Gupta