E-Commerce Commission Press Kit

For the multimedia industry, the question of bandwidth is crucial. Until Web users can downloada video in a matter or seconds, Web sites will not create many video products to sell online andWeb users will prefer to read text, watch television or use their VCR.Increased bandwidth will also benefit education and health care services. Educational serviceswill be able to use more video programming to supplement other online resources. The Web canalso be a very useful tool in medical education and for the delivery of health care diagnosticservices. Today’s Web users can access some information from their health plans and physiciansabout medical conditions, symptoms and suggested treatments. Increasingly, they will be able toschedule appointments, pay bills, and check the status of their claims online. As new equipment isdeveloped for remote diagnosis, doctors will be able to diagnose some medical conditions andrecommend treatments to patients via the Internet (state laws and regulations regardingtelemedicine and licensure may limit how widely remote diagnosis is used). However, becausesome medical diagnostics require very high-quality images (poor resolution could give theimpression of a tumor or a fracture where none exists, for instance), improvements in bandwidth,image quality and reliability will need to occur before telemedicine and remote medical diagnosticsemerge as viable industries on the Internet.34