Here’s a quick summary of telehealth news over the last four weeks.
1. CTN and AT&T Telehealth Network Expansion – The University of California’s California Telehealth Network (CTN) has a AT&T a contract to expand telehealth services in the state. Funding for the project comes for the FCC’s Rural Health Care Pilot Program. The project will see the CTN will working with AT&T to construct a statewide network connecting smaller regional hospitals and clinics to larger hospitals, giving rural residents access to more specialists and experts.
2. PricewaterhouseCoopers’s New HealthCast Report – According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, health care reform in the United States will results in a widespread effort to keep people well, out of the hospital and more engaged in managing their own health. The report suggests that lesser known provisions of the U.S. Health Reform package put increased emphasis on disease prevention, positive health outcomes and better coordination of care. Additionally, the report suggests the package emphasizes comparative effectiveness research, including more personalized medicine, which paves the way for more individualized care in a more patient-focused health system. According to the report, mass customization of health care services will be enabled by technology including smart phones, EMR databases, home health monitoring, telehealth, as well as wireless communication, social media and other Internet innovations.
3. Review of TeleStroke System in Kearney, Nebraska – The telestroke program in Nebraska uses a high-quality video and audio system to evaluate possible stroke patients in outlying hospitals. Typically, when patients suffer stroke, they have a limited time to receive clot-busting drugs, such as tPA. In this case, a physician only has three hours to make an intervention. Once a stroke patient is brought into an outlying hospital, the on-call neurologist in the system is available to evaluate the patient through telestroke.