My uncle, Richard Douglass, is working hard to improve health care in Ghana and in the rest of the world. His efforts are moving towards utilizing remote diagnosis to provide expert care to people in remote rural areas. Using satellite connected Internet technologies he would connect villagers who cannot normally receive primary medical care with doctors in remote areas. No word yet on whether they will also be signing up for Facebook accounts.

Douglass proposed using satellite transmission equipment, mounted on trucks, to bring patients and doctors together virtually. Sending teams with this technology to villages on a regular basis would be akin to having a visiting medical team on a predictable schedule. A patient in rural Ghana who's never seen a doctor before could be diagnosed by a physician in Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti or Bloomington, Ind.

Douglass believes drive-by telemedicine could be a model not just for Ghana, but also for Africa and the rest of the world.

On this end, telemedicine would broaden the experience of doctors and medical residents, and create business for companies that make the equipment needed to support it.