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Being cured at home without stay in hospital except for exceptional events. Having the opportunity to be examined by a specialist on the other side of world without leaving one's own country. Booking for diagnostic tests without queuing up. Those, above listed, seemed unreachable purposes, in a nation as Italy, where the health system, as well as other state organisms, is affected by serious dysfunction often due to a bureaucratic apparatus able only to damage citizens. In fact, the application into medical field of telematics allows proposing to health operators and patients a series of services, changing at root the concept of assistance by creating a diagnostic and therapy distance system. This kind of experience that in Italy has begun to be studied around 1976 and applied at the beginning of the Eighties, has been indicated with the term “telemedicine” or with the “health telematics “ one, circumstance that has created, and not seldom, a certain confusion. The two definitions in fact are not interchangeable at all and refer to specific and different sectors of the same branch of medicine. But the real experimentation about telecommunication and informatics in the health sector started in the United States in the Sixties. They were mainly employed by the Nasa, to assist spacemen during their stage in space, and to better the intervention chances in areas far from hospitals. The first investigations carried out between 1964 and 1968 were brought forward in private structures and concerned the possibility to carry out diagnostic and clinic transmissions. From 1969 till 1973 instead, the state too, by the means of the National Centre for Health Service Research, started to promote and to finance investigations on telemedicine. In 1974, finally, it started a third phase still lasting: telematics was introduced in the United States health plan. Currently for example in S. Francisco it's operative a system that links electronically four town medical centres to transmit and manage mammography and neuradiology images. In Baltimore, instead, university and local hospitals have developed an application of movable telemedicine allowing transmitting in real time data and video images concerning the patient being moved from an ambulance. This way the first aid of the hospital can get ready to admit him without wasting time in diagnostic tests. Japan started its own studies in this field some time later than USA, but soon it reached a very advanced level. At the beginning of the Eighties indeed it is founded the Medical Information System Development Centre (Medis Dc), financed by the State, where physicians worked together with informatics, telecommunications and economy experts. Japanese have on disposal remote consultation services, informatics systems in hospitals, a centralized net of medical aids, computerized analysis and medical information within hospitals and constant information link among the medical institutions. After having outlined the origins and the history of the telemedicine and health telematics let's define them better by the point of view of terminology. Indeed, not always over these years it has been clear by what they differ. Following we report a series of explanations by which it has been attempted to clear the meaning of the “telemedicine” word. In 1990 the European Union has agreed the definition for telemedicine establishing that it includes: “control, monitoring and management of patients, as well as their education and that of personnel, by the means of systems allowing a quick approach to consultation of experts and reference of information concerning patients, independently from where the first or the latter resides “. J.N. Van Goor and J.P. Christensen , in 1992, have beard that telemedicine consists of “the examination, observation of the patient and the training of health operators employing the telecommunication technologies in such a way that the specialists' consultation and information concerning patients could be accessible in the opportune site independently from patients and their data location “. An earlier definition of the Jwgt Telemedicine Inventory explains that telemedicine involves “the employ of modern information and telecommunication technologies to supply a customized treatment on distance and data transmission so to provide assistance “. A statement about the definition of the terminology concerning the health telematics is drawn form the Timed meeting (about which we are going to talk about next), thanks to the work of the Assites (Associazione italiana telemedicina e telematica sanitaria) - Telemedicine And Health Telematics Italian Association. This institution has engaged itself to clear that, with the employ of informatics in medicine, it's possible to define two different modalities of action inside telemedicine and health telematics. The first is referable to the urgency interventions, carried out by transferring clinic data belonging to a patient in real time. The second one is instead related to the remote consultation and it is carried out by sending data , on recording, to for example an excellence centre. Main applications of telemedicine in real time are the telecardiology and the telespirometry. If talking about the health telematics, instead, we refer to the transmission of more complex clinic information both static and on move (radiographs, Cat, nuclear magnetic resonance, remote consultation and videoconference), but also to the delivery of administrative data. Think for example to medical examination booking carried out at the Cup (Unique booking centre) counters, conceived to simplify the booking procedures of tests and specialists examination a so to be a sort of reception telematics linked with hospitals and analysis centres. Among the documents that can be transmitted via telematics there's also the discharge hospital sheet. So with the telemedicine terms it is meant an application allowing settling out methodologies of remote diagnostic and medical assistance. By the means of this discipline, as we've seen, it is possible to move information about health of patients without moving them from home. So it's possible not only to ensure medical assistance to whom is far from a health centre, but also to renew completely the whole health system paying special attention to the services of emergency, medical organisation, didactics health education, professional training and refresher courses. The employ of telematics and telecommunications can bring to a system where the hospital enterprises will be reserved only to acute phase patients or affected by very serious diseases: well then to whom that need special therapies or surgery operations. The sizeable part of patients would instead be assisted at home, by the family doctor constantly in contact with health and specialist centres. This way it will be avoided improper admissions, wards overcrowding and too prolonged stays in hospital. Furthermore, by the psychological point of view, the possibility to cure at home will allow many patients facing the disease with less anxiety, within the family environment. Target of the telemedicine is that of joining the clinic efficacy in curing patients to the management efficacy allowing to contain costs and to cure patients in the less possible times. A health structure works when there's harmony among clinic aspects and the managing ones required for its running. And the informatics revolution in last years allows carrying out a network of services able to increase the efficacy of therapies by optimizing at the same time the administrative system (including personnel, accountancy, examinations and analysis booking, functionality of services as canteens and kitchens, management of beds and so on). So being telemedicine inside a health process it can be created informative and hospital integrated systems, to get ready services of remote consultation on net, remote surveillance and assistance. Furthermore it's possible to better the efficacy of emergency interventions and to equip the patient with a microprocessor health sheet bringing his entire clinic and anamnesis data. The application range of telemedicine is very wide and covers several sectors of medicine as for example, cardiology, radiology, oncology, obstetrics, nephrology, spirometry, neurology, paediatrics, nourishment, old and disabled persons rehabilitation and cure. It can be employed inside health structures as outpatient's departments, first aid or nursing homes, but also at the first aid stations, from ambulances and by the same patients.