Healthcare IT News: The world’s smallest and most fragile people need all the help they can get.
Two recent reports concerning the use of telemedicine in hospitals or hospital departments catering to children paints a promising picture for the technology’s deployment in NICUs and other areas. One report from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles found that a remote telemedicine hookup to specialists located off-site helped improve the quality of care given to newborns in the neonatal intensive care unit. The other report, from the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital, found value in video links between hospitalized children and their parents, their caregivers and other hospitalized children.
Results of the CHLA study, recently published in the Journal of Perinatology, targeted 304 patient encounters on 46 pre-term and term infants at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center’s NICU and compared the care given by an on-site neonatologist with that offered by off-site specialists using remote robotic medicine technology.
“Telemedicine technology can provide the off-site neonatologist with direct visual and auditory information about the patient and the clinical scenario in real-time, and may facilitate the decision-making process for the neonatologist,” said the report.
The study comes at a crucial time, with telemedicine technology becoming more sophisticated and looking to gain a foothold in critical care settings and hospitals looking to improve care while dealing with limited staff and access to specialist care. A telemedicine setup in the NICU, proponents say, could allow hospitals – especially those in remote locations or with limited budgets and resources – to link directly and immediately to better-equipped NICUs and neonatologists.
“Aside from proving that the system is safe in the NICU, for the first time ever, the visual and audio accuracy and the ease of use of the system was an interesting finding,” said Istvan Seri, head of the USC Division of Neonatal Medicine at CHLA and co-author of the report, in a news story published by InformationWeek Healthcare. “In addition, the acceptance of the robot in the unit by the faculty, trainees, nursing and respiratory staff as well as, apparently, by the parents was truly remarkable.”
The CHLA study pointed out that the telemedicine system included a control station and remote-controlled robot, linked via the Internet over a secure broadband connection. Other features included bio-directional audio and video communications with real-time video, rapid-response cameras with zoom and auto-focus, a panoramic visualization system, a digital camera, audio microphones, amplification circuitry and custom software.
Researchers cautioned that the study shouldn’t been seen as substitute for on-site care. “As a robotic telemedicine exam cannot replace a bedside exam, robotic telemedicine technology should not be conceived as a replacement for the provision of on-site intensive care, but rather a way to ensure that prompt attention and early intervention based on direct and accurate information can be provided” to infants housed in a hospital’s NICU, the report said.
At the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, meanwhile, officials used a video communications system developed by Bloomington, Minn.-based Video Guidance to connect the newly opened hospital’s young patients with their parents, caregivers, even other patients.
“Families of hospitalized children are not always able to be at their sides,” said Jason Albrecht, the hospital’s pediatric palliative care coordinator and a child-family life specialist, in a press release.
“Some children remain in the hospital for long periods of time and some parents live many miles away, including out of the country. The desired result of the new video conference systems is to lessen emotional suffering caused by that separation.”
The health system currently has 21 in-room systems dispersed in the children’s hospital, along with three mobile video conferencing carts that float between the NICU and pediatric intensive care unit, as well as other parts of the hospital. The system can also connect to video conferencing services outside the hospital, such as a family with a PC or Mac and a video hookup at home.
Albrecht said the system offers several uses. It can be used by hospital doctors and staff to communicate with parents or caregivers who are at home, at work or elsewhere, and it can link doctors and patients at the different facilities of Fairview Health Services scattered around Minneapolis.
“This gives us the ability to visually connect a parent admitted to University of Minnesota Medical Center to a child admitted to University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital when both are patients,” said Albrecht. “For example, a parent donating an organ may be a patient at the medical center and a child receiving the transplanted organ is at the children’s hospital. Now they can communicate via video to see, share and support one another. This also enables a parent/family caregiver serving at one bedside to remain connected with what is happening at the other.”
“Long-term separation from school and peers adds another layer of stress to patients hospitalized for extended periods,” Albrecht added. “We will soon have the ability to loan affordable video conferencing equipment to schools that do not yet have this capability in order to connect patients with their class rooms.”
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