Definition of cyberMedicine

cyberMedicine -

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cyberMedicine is the discipline of applying the Internet to medicine. The field encompasses the use of global networking technologies to educate, innovate, and communicate in ways that promote medical practice, commerce, scholarship, and empowerment.

An offspring of the information revolution, cyberMedicine is rapidly transforming medicine into a virtual marriage of fields as disparate as the medical sciences, business and commerce, electronics, psychology, philosophy and health economics. As we progress deep into the 21st Century, comprehension of the impact of this new discipline on the near future and demands an integrative mind, an asset rare in today's culture of super-specialization.

cyberMedicine is creeping into the medicine of today, but it will swiftly become the medicine of the very near future, evolving from contemporary traditional and alternative medicine. Nearing its potential, it will then mutate into a wholly different and global discipline, which is powerful, efficient, and consumer friendly, incorporating individual and cultural wisdom of world experts. And as it revolutionizes the structure of medicine, cyberMedicine will ultimately offer untold benefits to every facet of medical care even in global locales where healthcare is woefully deficient. cyberMedicine is not a sub-set of something else -- it is the embodiment of 21st century medicine.

Individuals and institutions are stuck in thought-ruts, pursuing one, two or a few narrow pathways into the future. Review of the literature substantiates the lack of an integrative perspective. Rewards and advantage will go to one who sketches the whole from seemingly unconnected parts. That sketch will come from the cyberMedicine artists.

Sheila Moriber Katz, MD, MBA, and Kim Solez, MD