The Telegraph and the Beginnings of Telemedicine in Australia Robert H EIKELBOOM a,b,1 a Ear Science Institute Australia, Subiaco, Australia b Ear Sciences Centre, School of Surgery, The University of Western Australia Abstract. The history of telemedicine is at times presented to commence in the 20 th century. Events in Central Australia in 1874 show that the history goes further back, when the newly constructed telegraph played an important telemedicine role not only in enabling care for a wounded person, but also in uniting a dying man with his wife 2000 kilometres away. Innovation with the tools at hand has proven to be effective to bridge the tyranny of distance in the delivery of health care. Keywords. Telemedicine, history, Australia, telegraph Introduction Communication and information technologies are vital components in almost every telemedicine application, with advances in ICT usually driving development in telemedicine. The beginnings of telemedicine are to be found in the invention of the telegraph, with wireless, telephones, television, imaging devices, and the Internet all adding to the utility of telemedicine. Aronson [1] recounts the first reported use of the telephone for telemedicine in 1879 when a doctor listening to the cough of an infant reassured the grandmother that it was not croup and refused to attend for a house call. In the 1860s the telegraph was used in the American Civil War to pass on information about the care of wounded soldiers and arrange their transportation [2]. Historian, Geoffrey Blainey in his well-known book ‘The Tyranny of Distance’ describes how distance played an important role in shaping Australia, including how the telegraph was able to reduce the sense of isolation that cities and towns had from each other and from the rest of the world. When describing the beginnings of the telegraph in Australia he makes reference to a serious incident that occurred in Barrow Creek that may be the first reported use of telemedicine in Australia [3]. 1. Getting the News to Australia Australia was first settled in 1788, when a fleet of ships delivered a large group of convicts, soldiers and officials to the eastern coasts to set up a colony on Sydney. These ships took a year to make the journey from England. At that time, the return passage— back the same way they came westwards across the Indian Ocean, or later heading east 1 Corresponding Author: Adj. Prof RH Eikelboom, Head – eHealth Group, Ear Science Institute Australia, Suite 1, Level 2, 1 Salvado Rd, Subiaco, Western Australia 6008; E-mail: rob.eikelboom@earscience.org.au Global Telehealth 2012 A.C. Smith et al. (Eds.) © 2012 The authors and IOS Press. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-152-6-67 67