Telemedicine solution provider American Educational Telecommunications, or AET, is making waves in the medical field with telepresence technology. The company recently completed a real-time remote diagnosis of a newborn baby's heart murmur between Faith Regional Health Services in Norfolk, Neb. and Children's Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, Neb.

 

Medical doctors performed the diagnosis using advanced wireless video conferencing technology through a mobile camera device connected to an ultrasound machine.The patient was a baby boy, one of triplets delivered by Dr. Keith Vrbicky, at Midwest Health Partners and an attending physician at Faith Regional Health Services. The infant’s pediatrician, Dr. Jayan Vasudevan became concerned about the heart murmur while performing a post natal examination.

 

When Vasudevan requested a consult with a pediatric cardiologist to diagnose the severity of the murmur, the closest pediatric cardiologist was 115 miles away at the Children's Hospital & Medical Center.The doctors then agreed to set up a telemedicine consult using a remote echocardiogram system connected to a mobile and wireless transmitting video conferencing device, than to transport the baby to Omaha.

 

"If the diagnosis could be determined to be a mild defect, it would enable us to keep the family together in Norfolk and immediately eliminate the uncertainty of a potentially harmful heart defect," Vrbicky said in a statement. "Without the telemedicine consult, there was a real possibility that the baby would have had to be transported either via helicopter or ambulance to Omaha at a very high cost."

 

Doctors connected a Phillips 5500 ultrasound machine at Faith Regional Health Services to a Librestream Onsight 2000R video device through an S-video connection to perform the remote consult. The video was encrypted with AET's secured network technology system and streamed live to Dr. Scott Fletcher, a cardiologist with the University of Nebraska Medical Center/Creighton University Medical Center, Joint Division of Pediatric Cardiology in Omaha. Once Fletcher reviewed the ultrasound from Children's Hospital, he confirmed the diagnosis - a mild muscular ventricular sepal defect, a non-life threatening condition.

 

The telemedicine technology was the first of its kind used to combine AET technology, its remote wireless device provider, Librestream, Phillips and the hospitals. The secure network infrastructure setup between the two hospitals took 30 minutes, resulting in a quick and less costly diagnosis, hospital officials said.