The promise of telemedicine is to bring healthcare into the home and into remote areas that lack local medical staff and facilities.  One limitation on telemedicine is the lack of diagnostic devices enabled for use by the lay public, the ability to transmit the diagnostic data from such devices to medical personnel for evaluation, and the organization and management of the data over time.  

Some of the potential benefits of telemedicine are numerous:

• Improve convenience of medical care for patients and doctors
• Reduce ER and doctor visits through remote pre-screening
• Enable better medical management of the elderly chronically ill from home 
• Improve patient compliance
• Reduce healthcare costs