The push into health care by giant technology companies continued this morning, as Cisco and UnitedHealth announced a major foray into telemedecine. UnitedHealth, a big insurer, will use a Cisco product called HealthPresence to develop a national program to allow doctors to treat patients remotely — the kind of thing that’s been discussed for years, but has never really taken off in a big way. A statement the companies released notes that they also plan to introduce an in-home system. Home care is proving particularly popular with

technology companies these days. A few months back, Intel and GE said they would sell a system that allows doctors to monitor patients who are at home. Also this year, Google and IBM announced their own in-home system that could electronically relay data from devices such as blood-pressure cuffs and glucose meters. And Microsoft has its own personal health information system, HealthVault, that can connect with medical devices . Image: iStockphoto

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Health Care Companies: Cisco, Intel, Google, IBM, Microsoft