At first, “telehealth” sounds less like a legitimate medical practice and more like a Star-Trekian method of curing diseases through willpower.
Futuristic name aside, telehealth practices are rapidly working their way into doctor-patient interactions. What’s more, the growing telehealth community is now banding together with aid workers in Haiti to diagnose and treat thousands of earthquake injuries.
Telehealth — or, more commonly, telemedicine — usually involves multiple healthcare providers electronically swapping patient data. Instead of shipping an invalid across the country for a consult, a physician in rural Virginia e-mails his patient’s health history, photographs, and X-ray images to a specialist at the Minnesota Mayo Clinic. The two professionals then set up a video conference with the patient, and the three are able to hash out a diagnosis and treatment plan.
Telemedical technology has far-reaching benefits. A rural doctor in India can use Skype to consult with specialists at European institutions. Professors at U.S. medical universities can post videos advising Nigerian doctors how to care most effectively for AIDS patients.
Now, busy American physicians can donate time and brain power to the Haiti relief effort without leaving their offices.
In the face of the January earthquake, Haitian aid organizations found themselves desperately understaffed. The initial wave of volunteer physicians, surgeons, and nurses couldn’t begin to fill the nation’s staggering needs; relief workers struggled to persuade full-time doctors to drop practices and families to spend an unknown length of time on the ravaged island.
The University of Miami in Florida is poised to vastly simplify the commitment of joining a medical relief team. Those who want to volunteer merely have to turn on their computers.
The University’s Miller School of Medicine is joining forces with the Department of Defense’s Southern Command (Southcom) to become “a hub for connecting Haitian patients with healthcare providers in several U.S. telemedicine programs around the country,” Miller’s Dr. Anne Burdick told The New York Times.
The two organizations are telemedicine veterans. Both have also developed a presence in Haiti since the earthquake: the U of M staffs a 240-bed tent hospital in Port-au-Prince, and Southcom has stationed several hospital ships off the island’s coast.
The hospital and ships feature heavily in new telemedicine plans. Very soon, hospital staff should be able to stage video consultations with U.S. physicians after e-mailing them patient information a few hours in advance. When Internet connections are spotty, the physicians can rely on a ham radio station set up outside the hospital.
Boasting a staff of 82 physicians and 136 nurses, the offshore Southcom medical ship Comfort will soon be used for similar consultations with a military rehab hospital in San Antonio, Tex. The Navy hopes to make the Comfort a long-term offshore presence.
It’s this long-term presence that will make or break medical relief efforts. The road to medical stability is filled with roadblocks: scarce supplies and personnel, little fresh water, crowded camps, rampant disease and a looming rainy season. While most of the issues are out of telemedicine’s jurisdiction, the new technology will play a tremendous role in streamlining and upgrading emergency and long-term medical care through remote consultations, ongoing education programs and simple moral support.
The American Telemedicine Association is pitching in to ease the strain of a long-term telemedical presence by coordinating donations of the necessary hardware, software and services.
With the technology in place, telemedicine will likely remain in Haiti when relief agencies withdraw. Dr. S. Ward Casscells, a cardiologist who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs under George W. Bush, stressed the importance of training Haitian medical professionals to use the military’s telemedical equipment after personnel leave.
Through telemedicine, other nations can maintain a guiding medical presence in Haiti as the country rebuilds. Scott C. Simmons, University of Miami Director of Telehealth, knows there is no quick fix for catastrophe. As he told The New York Times, “We are in this for the long haul.”
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Geneva Langeland
Quelle/Source: Chimes, 19.02.2010
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
