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DOI: 10.1191/0309132502ph352ra Virtual medical geographies: conceptualizing telemedicine and regionalizationDepartment of Occupational Therapy, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX 77555, USA Telemedicine is an innovation that is changing the geography of medical care provision. Regionalization of care is one important type of geographical change resulting from the implementation of telemedicine technology. This paper introduces a range of issues bound up with telemedicine and medical care regionalization and offers a geographical conceptualization of those issues through a synthesis of ideas from several literatures. It begins by providing a background for regionalization and telemedicine. The paper continues by examining the formation of virtual regions and the problem of their internal integration and integration with material regions of care. A penultimate section argues for the use of regional economic geography and territoriality as contexts for understanding the continued growth and development of telemedicine networks. As part of an overall critical challenge to the protelemedicine bias in the medical care literature, the paper ends by suggesting the development of a normative ethics by medical geographers.
Key Words: telemedicine regionalization technology virtual regions networks integration regional economic geography territoriality ethics
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