Reach Out and Heal Someone: Telemedicine and the Globalization of Health Care

Abstract

This article considers how telemedicine emerged as an important new means of constructing new geographic and social relationships in health care. Telemedicine is considered in light of the telecommunications revolution of the 1990s and the potential for expanding health markets during this period. An argument is made that telemedicine is part of an actuarial mode of organizing peoples according to the interests of emerging health care corporations. The techniques of the field are central components of a spatial social ordering of subjects into populations within a newly converged global health network. This article argues that telemedicine is not simply a new approach to delivering health care better, it is a method of tailoring health-care communities to match the demands of a global health economy.