Telemedicine in veterinary practice

Veterinary surgeons have a long tradition of consulting one another about problem cases and many have unwittingly practised telemedicine when discussing cases by telephone or by sending laboratory reports by telefax. Specific veterinary telemedicine applications have been in use since the early 1980s, but little research has been undertaken in this field. The Pubmed and CAB International databases were searched for the following Boolean logic-linked keywords; veterinary and telemedicine, veterinary and telecare, animal and telemedicine, animal and telecare and veterinary and e-mail and an additional search was made of the worldwide web, using Google Scholar. This returned 25 papers which were reviewed. Of these only 2 report research. Sixteen papers had no references and 1 author was associated with 13 papers. Several themes emerge in the papers reviewed. These include remarks about the use of telemedicine, the benefits that can and are derived from the use of telemedicine, areas of practice in which telemedicine is being used, ethical and legal issues around the practice of telemedicine, image standards required for telemedicine, the equipment that is required for the practice of telemedicine, advice on ways in which digital images can be obtained and educational aspects of telemedicine. These are discussed. Veterinary practice has lagged behind its human counterpart in producing research on the validity and efficacy of telemedicine. This is an important field which requires further research.