Telemedicine is being put on the map in Haiti
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Recently we talked about how telecommunications is enabling people living in rural parts of Argentina to get care from the best physicians in the country, without having to travel for it. The concept is working in a similar way for victims of the Haiti earthquake.
Medscape reports that it only took a few days after the quake for volunteers from the University of Miami in Florida to set up a tent hospital in Port-au-Prince. Team member Antonio Marttos Jr, MD, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine and director of trauma telemedicine at Jackson Memorial Medical Center's William Lehman Injury Research Center in Miami, Florida, explained that what was also missing besides enough medical supplies was a link to the trauma center in Miami. By setting up a telecommunication link, the doctors were able to consult in real time with their colleagues in Florida, ensuring that each patient got the best care possible, or was routed to a hospital.
Two devices about the size of a laptop were donated to the team, and the satellite telephone, internet and video camera contained in each allowed doctors to communicate with each other. We might think that doctors consulting quickly via telecommunications is a standard, but in places like Haiti, it's not the case at all. Equipment and connections like these weren't around before the quake, or were rare. Yet they can go a long, long way in poverty-stricken and rural areas to help patients get care from qualified doctors. And in cases like disaster relief, they're practically essential.
The satellite connection allowed doctors to call for more medical supplies and medications as needed, consult with fellow doctors still in the US, and importantly, report when severely injured patients needed to be evacuated to the US for care and coordinate to which hospitals they needed to be sent.
WATCH VIDEO: Haiti Needs Long-Term Help, Doctor Says
With telecommunications as an option, doctors are able to do even the most basic consultations with cell phones, taking a photo of the x-ray films and emailing them to specialists elsewhere so they can consult before moving forward with treatment. While some areas of Haiti lacked internet access or satellite hookup, most areas benefited from one of the two in order to help patients. Anthony Alessi, MD, associate clinical professor of neurology at the University of Connecticut Medical School in Farmington and director of the stroke program at Backus Hospital, Norwich, Connecticut states that while much of Haiti didn't have access to telecommunication technology for medicine before the earthquake, that might now change.
"What's most exciting is that we are building an entire health system in Haiti," he said. "That's where telemedicine and technology will come in. I think Haiti is finally going to be connected to the rest of the world."
New York Times reports that telehealth or telemedicine, is an offshoot of the space program, originally developed by NASA for astronauts. But here on planet Earth, it's doing a world of good.
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