There has been a considerable increase in the number of hospitals turning to tele-medicine to tackle the shortage of critical-care specialists available on site.
A recent example of the success of remote treatment is the case of Kristopher Lee Taylor, who was diagnosed with a life threatening diabetic reaction, called diabetic acidosis. The 32 year old patient was treated at the Banner Estrella Medical Center remotely by a doctor named Dr. Baruch Goldstein, sitting at Tel Aviv. A two-way camera was installed in the patient’sroom; the doctor was able to assess Taylor’s condition and constantly monitored his vital signs via the camera and communicated with the nurses and Taylor. The patient was successfully treated remotely and was out of danger within 48 hours. Taylor was very much satisfied with the treatment and was more confident as he always had the doctor monitoring him.
Banner Health hospital is among the 36 hospitals that provide eICU facility for critically ill patients. The system at Banner comprises a command center at Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa that connects the doctors and nurses to about 15 hospitals and 450 beds in Arizona, Nebraska and Colorado. Doctors from Southern California and Tel Aviv have recently joined the network. Banner calls their remote treatment system iCare, which is an option available to all the patients admitted to the ICU. The system has been accepted by the medical staff and they have become comfortable working with this system since its inception in 2006. Patients are monitored more effectively through this system and life-threatening diseases are handled better by the specialists available elsewhere. This method of treatment reduces the duration of their stay in the ICU and the hospitals. Banner is now working out the possibility of extending remote monitoring to medical and surgical units as well.
There have been a number of reports and success stories in favour of telemedicine and its success rate in reducing the risk of fatalities and infections. According to Goldstein, telemedicine provided him with the satisfaction of practicing medicine at the U.S sitting in Israel. He works during the day attending to patients in Israel and attends to patients in Arizona during the night with help from the doctors at Banner.
Source: http://www.bannerhealth.com/