Health Informatics Blog

Article in the Guardian:

Spanish health authorities launched a virtual portal through the Second Life website yesterday designed to help young people too embarrassed to speak to a doctor about sexually transmitted disease or a drug problem.

Real doctors will log on and offer advice to their anonymous patients. What both will see is an image of a consulting room with a doctor and a typical patient.

Dr Rosario Jimènez, of the Adolescent Attention Working Group, is one of the doctors who will spend up to four hours a week answering their virtual patients’ questions.

She said: “Teenagers do not often go to see the doctor but this is an efficient and amusing tool to reach them because we can both use the same route. Even though they do not often suffer serious illnesses, they often expose themselves to risks which can develop into problems in the future.

“This is a way to talk about their doubts about taking drugs or sexual relations which they cannot do in a traditional consultation.”

The Second Life health portal was set up by the Spanish Society for Family and Community Medicine (FYC) and the Coalition for Citizens with Chronic Illnesses.

Dr Luis Aguillera, FYC president, said: “This idea started as a way to connect health professionals and adolescents and to give internet users a reliable space to get health advice.”

The Spanish-language isla de salud (health island) on Second Life will also include detailed information on health matters and a meeting room for website users.

The FYC plans to open other Second Life portals for chronic conditions in six months.

Aguillera said: “Even though a virtual consultation can never substitute for a real face-to-face one, we will be able to deal with problems of dermatology and psychology through a webcam.”

India-Africa telemedicine link established:

He walks into a consulting room at Black Lion Hospital in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa and greets a doctor at the Care Hospital in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.

Linked by a high-speed Internet connection, the doctors study X-rays and laboratory results.

Flipping between charts, they use light pens to point out important features. They can see each other in windows on their screens, while medical charts fill the rest of the display.

India launched this “telemedicine” project in Ethiopia last July at a cost of $2.13 million. The project links hospitals in Ethiopia with the Hyderabad-based Care Group of Hospitals, India’s leading cardiac institute.

The scheme is part of the pan-African e-network, a 5.42 billion-rupee ($135.6-million) joint initiative between the African Union and India which was launched in Ethiopia last year to improve Internet links and communication.

Read more at Canada.com

Here’s a video that’s been doing the rounds recently:

Japan has recently launched a new Satellite capable of providing internet connectivity at speeds of 1.2GB/sec around the world.

The satellite will initially focus on the Asia-Pacific region around Japan.

“Among other uses, this will make possible great advances in telemedicine, which will bring high-quality medical treatment to remote areas, and in distance education, connecting students and teachers separated by great distances,” JAXA said.

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The EC is asking telemedicine experts to contribute to a survey of Telemedicine for Chronic Care:

The European Commission (EC) invites experts in the field of telemedicine to respond to a short online questionnaire designed to collect information on the role of innovative technologies for chronic disease management. The answers will help structure the TeleHealth 2007 conference (Brussels, Belgium, 11 December 2007) and will influence the way in which national problems will be addressed.

The online questionnaire should be completed by October 26, 2007 and is available at: ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch

The TeleHealth 2007 conference will provide a platform for exchanging experiences and discussing the reasons why telemedicine is not yet as developed as it should be. The EC aims to propose concrete actions and solutions at a European level. Purely national issues, e.g. those related to specific national legislation, will not be addressed; the conference will focus on issues common to several Member States or related to cross-border activities and that would benefit from a European slant.

The answers to the questionnaire and the outcome of the conference will help build the EC Communication on ‘telemedicine and innovative technologies for chronic disease management’ planned for October 2008. This communication will be the culmination of a process starting with the current consultation aiming at gathering expertise in all Member States.

Registration for the TeleHealth 2007 is available at: ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/cf/telehealth_2007/

HL7 gets a new CTO, Accenture’s John Quinn.

Jay Parkinson, MD MPH - employs the latest communication technology to offer a new kind of primary care practice.

British Computer Society says ‘One Patient, One Record’ unrealistic.

Archives of Internal Medicine study says Electronic Health Records fail to boost patient care in routine doctor visits.

Microwave Bras designed to help detect breast cancer.

Company ditches telemedicine for online gambling, shifts operations to Ireland.

Satellite based telemedicine systems for the French militiary:

The French Ministry of Defense has selected Vizada to provide mobile satellite communications to enable military surgeons to transmit images to medical staff in a different site or country, the company announced Sept. 19.

Vizada, formerly France Telecom Mobile Satellite Communications, is using a solution based on Inmarsat’s Broadband Global Area Network  (BGAN) system. The system uses simultaneous IP BGAN links, a 256 kilobit per second (kbps) streaming connection to perform the videoconferencing and relay images from the operating table to the medical staff and a background IP connection with speeds of up to 492 kbps to send medical files, analysis reports, X-rays, photos and scans. The IP traffic is relayed to Vizada’s ground station and leased line to the hospital.

 Source: Satellite Today

Andy Kofke talks about his ICU Telemedicine system:

From this vantage point I can control a video camera to “go into” a room with two way audio communications, see a page summarizing all the patient’s main points, follow the bedside monitor continuously, read progress notes, view chest x rays, and review labs, among other things….everything except physically examine a patient or do a procedure on a patient. Also there is a sentry system that alarms when there is a trend or overt problem indicating that something is amiss…..wow.

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