Abstract
March 2011 marks the end of a 27-year journey of the U.S. space shuttle Discovery. The age of this Discovery now passes to history, most likely to a museum of some sort. The other two shuttles, Atlantis and Endeavour, will also pass into history after their upcoming missions in 2011. This is when the shuttle retires and America, a leader in innovation and discovery, will purchase seats from the Russians and perhaps one day soon from a commercial provider for a ride to space.
These space vehicles have taken human kind to new heights and new discoveries. The technology we enjoy today can in some way track its pedigree to the shuttle program and to the space program in general. Telemedicine itself was a critical tool in the delivery of healthcare as early as 1957, during the beginning years of the space race, and continues to be a significant tool for providing healthcare during spaceflight today and into the future.
On March 8, 2011, the crew of Discovery was awakened by music from the original Star Trek series and William Shatner's voice—Captain Kirk for those non-trekkies. His voice, in 1966 and today, conveyed a sense of discovery—“to boldly go where no one has gone before.” Did you ever feel like that when you are trying to move telemedicine forward in your institution? The achievements of the past 30 years of the U.S. space shuttle and the space program itself are a direct outcome of the age of discovery.
The Age of Discovery was that period of time between the 15th and 17th centuries—a bridge between the Middle Ages and the modern world. However, although this historical age is in the past, an age of discovery is still ongoing. The opening up of travel routes for commerce and the discovery by some of what others already knew about reinforced our innate human need to discover new things. The modern world rapidly developed from the Renaissance forward. Today, our understanding of the physical world and our ability to analyze data and share it instantaneously often make us think what else can be discovered? Where else can we go? Can we solve the riddle of this disease and so on?
This is the point, although the Age of Discovery (1400–1600) is part of the historical record, the constantly changing world, embracing the next best gadget, seems like an “unstoppable” train! All “exploration” initiatives have begun with significant government input in both direction and treasury. Leaders of world in the 1400s funded crews of men and ships to sail the oceans to find faster routes east and west, and leaders in the 1960s challenged us to “get to the moon before the decade was out.” Today, the ability to develop, adapt, or adopt technologies is being done by individuals. Have you seen all those apps for the iPhone or the Droid? Although investment by governments may continue to lead the way, entrepreneurship of the individual or of small commercial endeavor will lead the way in many areas, resulting in discovery.
The discovery of new technologies for public health and global health will help us address the issues of a smaller world. As Discovery orbited the Earth for the last time on March 9, 2011—it takes only 90 min to circumnavigate the globe—news of the events unfolding in Libya, Egypt, and throughout the region were seen as they unfolded, thanks in part to social media tools such as Facebook. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and companies like this sprung up from ideas of individuals. They were not a product of large government investment. However, that economic catalyst is certainly still required to push forward major tectonic shifts in technology.
Recently, NASA held a symposium on the development of a “telemedicine” capability to support a human mission to a near-Earth asteroid. The near-Earth asteroid mission is part of the Obama administration direction to NASA. The development of systems to support human health on such missions will lead to new discoveries, which will benefit all human kind.
NASA, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the U.S. Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center as well as other organizations will continue to push innovation and discovery forward. While the age of Discovery has come to a close, the age of discovery is still alive and doing well.
Updates on the Journal
As the editors of this journal, we are committed to bringing you the best papers in this growing field of telemedicine, telehealth, e-health, etc. We have ratcheted up our acceptance criteria so that we only accept the best of the best. Last year we received a record number of submissions—228. Many top-ranked journals have a very high rejection rate. Ours is in the middle of the pack and is going up. The number of papers that actually get published and referenced by others in this field helps make your journal the number one journal on this subject worldwide.
If you have an interest in serving as a reviewer, please contact us via e-mail (
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