For one hundred years medical and hospital care have developed as telecommunications have been disseminated throughout the industrialized societies.

Telecommunications have a number of important contributions to make in emergency medicine:

1. To permit reporting of all illness or incident to the rescue and medical services.

2. To permit physicians to offer advice and communicate with the patient and/or his rescuers or paramedical attendants.

3. To permit direct observation of the patient's condition by the physician through telemetry of the E.C.G., etc.

4. To permit co-ordination between rescue services and receiving hospitals and between district hospitals and regional centres.