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More Hospitals Are Using Video ... Speeding Treatment
Colleagues,
As reported in the Wall Street Journal ... In August, Tim Buirge suffered a stroke, leaving him unable to speak or move the right side of his face. That's when he went on TV.
At the local hospital in McCandless, Pa., where Mr. Buirge sought treatment, the 58-year-old lay in bed as a stroke specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 15 miles away, watched him on a giant TV, courtesy of a video camera in Mr. Buirge's room. The diagnosis was critical, since for most stroke patients, a clot-dissolving drug received shortly after arriving at a hospital can reduce the effects of stroke and limit permanent disabilities. But the risk is that for some patients with a certain type of stroke, such a drug can actually increase bleeding in the brain and boost the chance of death.
After reviewing Mr. Buirge's vital signs and a CT scan, the stroke specialist used the remote camera to check such things as the patient's speech and eye movements and his ability to follow commands. The Pittsburgh-based doctor then recommended that the local hospital administer the drug, called tPA...
... Experiences like Mr. Buirge's may become more common as hospitals increasingly install video technology to connect local and regional hospitals to large urban medical centers...
... Video medicine is useful for diagnosing a range of ailments that rely heavily on visual inspection, ... In addition to strokes, the systems can be used by faraway dermatologists to determine the severity of burns and other skin conditions, and by trauma specialists to assess the severity of a wound. Neonatal specialists are using video systems to figure out from afar whether a newborn needs intensive care. Health-care providers also expect that videos will help them identify patients with chronic conditions like diabetes at an earlier stage by making medical advice available in traditionally underserved areas...
... The video-conferencing systems, from companies like Polycom Inc., LifeSize Communications Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc., typically cost $30,000 to $50,000. About 3,500 hospitals and other medical facilities in the U.S. now have such systems, up from about 2,500 in 2007, and that's growing about 15% a year, according to the American Telemedicine Association ... Colorado recently announced plans to connect 400 state-run health facilities via video... about $400 million will be made available over the next six months from the Obama administration's stimulus package that can be used to create video links between hospitals.
... Some of the bigger networks are centered in places like the Stroke Institute at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which maintains video links with 26 smaller hospitals ... University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has video connections with about 350 facilities, including a few in Europe and South America. And the University of Arizona's Telemedicine Program links more than 150 sites around the state with hubs in Tucson, Phoenix and Flagstaff...
Read on at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704882404574461540637...
See "MedTech-IQ" Telemedicine search results at: http://medtechiq.ning.com/main/search/search?q=telemedicine
ENJOY!
CC
As reported in the Wall Street Journal ... In August, Tim Buirge suffered a stroke, leaving him unable to speak or move the right side of his face. That's when he went on TV.
At the local hospital in McCandless, Pa., where Mr. Buirge sought treatment, the 58-year-old lay in bed as a stroke specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 15 miles away, watched him on a giant TV, courtesy of a video camera in Mr. Buirge's room. The diagnosis was critical, since for most stroke patients, a clot-dissolving drug received shortly after arriving at a hospital can reduce the effects of stroke and limit permanent disabilities. But the risk is that for some patients with a certain type of stroke, such a drug can actually increase bleeding in the brain and boost the chance of death.
After reviewing Mr. Buirge's vital signs and a CT scan, the stroke specialist used the remote camera to check such things as the patient's speech and eye movements and his ability to follow commands. The Pittsburgh-based doctor then recommended that the local hospital administer the drug, called tPA...
... Experiences like Mr. Buirge's may become more common as hospitals increasingly install video technology to connect local and regional hospitals to large urban medical centers...
... Video medicine is useful for diagnosing a range of ailments that rely heavily on visual inspection, ... In addition to strokes, the systems can be used by faraway dermatologists to determine the severity of burns and other skin conditions, and by trauma specialists to assess the severity of a wound. Neonatal specialists are using video systems to figure out from afar whether a newborn needs intensive care. Health-care providers also expect that videos will help them identify patients with chronic conditions like diabetes at an earlier stage by making medical advice available in traditionally underserved areas...
... The video-conferencing systems, from companies like Polycom Inc., LifeSize Communications Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc., typically cost $30,000 to $50,000. About 3,500 hospitals and other medical facilities in the U.S. now have such systems, up from about 2,500 in 2007, and that's growing about 15% a year, according to the American Telemedicine Association ... Colorado recently announced plans to connect 400 state-run health facilities via video... about $400 million will be made available over the next six months from the Obama administration's stimulus package that can be used to create video links between hospitals.
... Some of the bigger networks are centered in places like the Stroke Institute at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which maintains video links with 26 smaller hospitals ... University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has video connections with about 350 facilities, including a few in Europe and South America. And the University of Arizona's Telemedicine Program links more than 150 sites around the state with hubs in Tucson, Phoenix and Flagstaff...
Read on at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704882404574461540637...
See "MedTech-IQ" Telemedicine search results at: http://medtechiq.ning.com/main/search/search?q=telemedicine
ENJOY!
CC
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