Currently, there is wide variation in the resources, capabilities, and programs used to support and coordinate system-level emergency preparedness among academic health systems. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:574-577).

Disasters have many deleterious effects and are becoming more frequent. From a health-care perspective, disasters may cause periods of stress for hospitals and health-care systems. Telemedicine is a rapidly growing technology that has been used to improve access to health-care during disasters. Telemedicine applied in disasters is referred to as disaster telemedicine. Our objective was to conduct a scoping literature review on current use of disaster telemedicine to develop recommendations addressing the most common barriers to implementation of a telemedicine system for regional disaster health response in the United States. Publications on telemedicine in disasters were collected from online databases. This included both publications in English and those translated into English. Predesigned inclusion/exclusion criteria and a PRISMA flow diagram were applied. The PRISMA flow diagram was used on the basis that it would help streamline the available literature. Literature that met the criteria was scored by 2 reviewers who rated relevance to commonly identified disaster telemedicine implementation barriers, as well as how disaster telemedicine systems were implemented. We also identified other frequently mentioned themes and briefly summarized recommendations for those topics. Literature scoring resulted in the following topics: telemedicine usage (42 publications), system design and operating models (43 publications), as well as difficulties with credentialing (5 publications), licensure (6 publications), liability (4 publications), reimbursement (5 publications), and technology (24 publications). Recommendations from each category were qualitatively summarized.

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My aim here is to present an editio princeps of a newly discovered Arabic translation of a very important passage from Plato's Republic (Book VI, 506d3–509b10) found in the work entitled Kitāb fī Masā'il al-umūr al-ilāhiyya (hereafter Masā'il), penned by the somewhat obscure Neoplatonist Abū Hāmid al-Isfizārī (fl. mid-fourth / tenth c.). While an edition of al-Isfizārī's work has been published by Daniel Gimaret, the manuscript he used (Ragıp Paşa 1463) lacked the literal translation of the Republic passage. The one other known exemplar of the work, MS Zāhiriyya 4871, dated slightly later than the first, appears to be closer to the author's original unedited version; it contains the Republic passage. I am currently preparing a new edition of the work on the basis of the Zāhiriyya manuscript, but it seemed worthwhile to bring the Republic passage to immediate attention. I do not attempt here a thorough evaluation of al-Isfizārī's philosophy as presented in the Masā'il; this can be done successfully only upon completion of the edition. However, to place the work in its proper context, I do provide a brief overview of the transmission of Plato's Republic in Arabic; a discussion of new information on al-Isfizārī's Nachlass, and a description of the two exemplars of his Masā'il. The edited text of the passage from the Republic is accompanied by a provisional translation.

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