Learning Objectives:

1. Describe a series of prior telehealth technologies and their impact on medical practice over time, focusing on the telephone, radio, television, and digital computer.
2. Evaluate the promise of new communications platforms to enhance equity in access to health care, and the limitations faced in acheiving these goals through historical analysis.
3. Understand how prior clinicians and health services research have come to terms with what is present, and what is absent, in clinical care via telecommunicatiosn devices.