From the President’s Commission on Mental Health recommendations: 6.1 Use health technology and telehealth to improve access and coordination of mental health care, especially for Americans in remote areas or in underserved populations.

6.2 Develop and implement integrated electronic health record and personal health information systems.

Preventing mental illnesses remains a promise of the future. Granted, the best option is to avoid or delay the onset of any illness, but the Executive Order directed the Commission to conduct a comprehensive study of the delivery of mental health services. The Commission recognizes that it is better to prevent an illness than to treat it, but unmet needs and barriers to services must first be identified to reach the millions of Americans with existing mental illnesses who are deterred from seeking help. The barriers may exist for a variety of reasons:

Stigma,
Fragmented services,
Cost,
Workforce shortages,
Unavailable services, and
Not knowing where or how to get care.
These barriers are all discussed in this report.

From the BBC News: A television set in a cramped room off a corridor in a busy London hospital provides Victor Power with the key to his freedom.

Without the special television set, Victor would need to spend more of his time in hospital and less time relaxing in the familiar environments of his own home. But using the telemedicine scheme allows Victor and another four patients with cystic fibrosis to spend more time at home and less at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London.

With just the flick of a switch, physiotherapist Olive Wilkinson can bring the hospital to the comfort of Victor’s bedroom.

From the ATSP website:

The winners of the Telehealth 2003 Awards include PDSHeart, LLC, Telemedicina de Mexico (Grupo Seesa Telecomunicaciones), Visiting Nurse Association Inc., Health Telematic Network S.p.A., and Catherine Britain of Rodeo Net Consulting. The awards were presented during the ATSP teleconference, ATSP Telehealth 2003, which took place September 16-18, 2003. The Telehealth Awards were created by the Association of Telehealth Service Providers (ATSP) to recognize and honor those organizations that are actively working to promote excellence in the telehealth industry. Awards were given in two categories: Vendor Organizations and Healthcare Providers.

Interesting story we found at the excellent ATSP.ORG site on wireless telemedicine:

Medical Service paramedics now use hand-held computers and a wireless data network to give critical information to doctors well before the patient reaches the hospital. Officials believe the system is the first of its kind in the United States.

The new system was up and running this summer, but it wasn’t until last Friday morning that doctors knew it would reliably let patients bypass the emergency room, shaving crucial minutes off their treatment time.

Paramedics from Cabarrus EMS showed up at Delmer Sizemore’s home in Concord, North Carolina, and within minutes had connected him to a portable electrocardiograph, a machine that monitored his heartbeat through 12 electrical sensors.

“They were hooking all these leads on me,” Sizemore said. “I had no idea what was going on.”

Paramedics watched the readings on their hand-held computer to see whether he was having a heart attack. The computer sent the data to an identical machine at the hospital.

Doctors there were able to evaluate Sizemore’s heartbeat and prepare for his arrival and treatment at the cardiac catheterization lab, instead of sending him through the emergency room first.

Thanks to the new system, Sizemore was treated just 33 minutes after he reached NorthEast Medical Center — which hospital officials believe is a national speed record — and suffered no permanent heart damage.

More telemedicine rollouts in India, where the reported ratio of of hospital beds to citizens is 1,333 to one (compared to one bed for every 212 citizens in the USA):

Doctors at the institute say that `telemedicine’ is beyond just being medical consultancy. Once all the primary health care centres (PHCs) and the central health care centres (CHCs) are inter-linked with a main centre, diagnosis and treatment will become easier and less time-consuming.

Doctors involved in various projects concerning telemedicine say that “It is a perfect blend of information technology (IT) and communication. Computers with dedicated software and allied equipments help the doctor after he types in a particular patient’s case history and sends it to the main centre along with investigative reports and scanned images. The specialist doctor sitting at the main centre would study the reports and send back the diagnosis along with the suggested line of treatment.

According to this story a new telemedicine program in India, by Apollo Hospitals, will generate over 40 million additional jobs. If India has a billion people are 4% going to be employed by this program?

On the importance of the course, he said the course was expected to generate 40 million additional jobs in the country and also to earn $300 billion revenue to India over a period of time.

It was big telemedicine news across a lot of small towns recently, as the USDA dished out 84 grants for more then $32m.

Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman today announced the selection of 84 Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) grants totaling more than $32 million, providing greater educational opportunities and medical service to rural citizens in 41 states.

     “The Bush Administration recognizes the importance of technology in bringing new resources to rural America,” said Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman. “These grants will help expand the availability of state of the art health care and educational resources to rural families.”

     In total, 57 distance education grants for $23.5 million, and 27 telemedicine grants for more than $ 8.9 million were selected for funding. The education projects will help 556 schools provide students with educational tools to better equip them for the global digital economy. Additionally, rural residents will have access to better, faster and more modern health care through 190 medical service facilities. A complete list of the selected grant recipients can be found at the USDA Rural Development web site at: http://www.rurdev.usda.gov