Conferencing

It is a set of Interactive Telecommunication technologies which allows interacting two or more locations via video and audio transmissions one at a time. It is a type of groupware also called as Visual Collaboration

Multipoint videoconferencing

Conferencing among three or more location points is possible by Mutlipoint control unit. This acts as a bridge that interconnects from several sources. All parties call the MCU unit, or the MCU unit can also call the parties which are going to participate, in sequence. The MCU bridges are of two types IP and ISDN-based videoconferencing. There are MCUs which are pure software, and some are combination of hardware and software. An MCU is characterized according to the number of simultaneous calls it can handle

Affect on public

Now a day’s high speed Internet connectivity has become more widely available at a reasonable cost and the cost of video capture and display technology has decreased. Consequently personal video teleconference systems based on a webcam, personal computer system set-up, software compression and broadband Internet connectivity have become affordable for the general public. Furthermore, the availability of free software (often as part of chat programs) has made software based videoconferencing accessible to many

Affect on medicine and health

Videoconferencing is a very useful technology for telemedicine and telenursing applications, such as diagnosis, consulting, transmission of medical images, etc., in real time. Using VTC, patients may contact nurses and physicians in medical emergency or routine situations, physicians and other paramedical professionals can discuss cases across large distances, etc. Special peripherals such as microscopes fitted with digital cameras, videoendoscopes, medical ultrasound imaging devices, otoscopes, etc., can be used in conjunction with VTC equipment to transmit data about a patient