VideoConferencing Insight Newsletter


The Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) is the result of a merger of three award-winning, provincially-funded telemedicine Networks - CareConnect, NORTH Network and VideoCare - on 1 April 2006. 23 November 2006.
	23 November 2006. The Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) celebrated its official launch today with a multi-site announcement that showcased how its videoconferencing and information technologies provides access to care for thousands of people across the Province of Ontario. OTN is the most extensive telemedicine environment in Canada, delivering its programs and ... (read article)



The impact that Videocare has been evaluated by Health Canada; Southwestern Ontario’s first Telestroke initiative won the first award at the 2005 Polycom User Group (PUG) Conference. 20 November 2006.
	Posted 20 November 2006. Southwestern Ontario’s first Telestroke initiative using the Videocare network and Polycom’s video telemedicine solutions was the winner of the first award at the 2005 Polycom User Group (PUG) Conference. (See out Telemedicne story of 12 December 2005 - archived under User Applications/Telemedicine -3.) The program provided rural stroke pa... (read article)



How VideoCare, the Southwestern Ontario Tele-health Network planned and implemented a 57-site video conferencing network in the hospitals of Southwestern Ontario. 20 November 2006.
	Posted 20 November 2006. VideoCare, the Southwestern Ontario Tele-health Network runs a 57-site video conferencing network in the hospitals of Southwestern Ontario. This network is designed to extend both existing and proposed medical services across the entire region through video consultation. Local doctors and other healthcare workers find that VideoCare gives them the abili... (read article)



Charleston Area Medical Center created multimedia presentations on diabetes for more than 7,000 rural family physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants to view live and on-demand. 9 November 2006.
	9 November 2006. Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC) has expanded its use of the Mediasite™ webcasting and content management system from Sonic Foundry to delivering multimedia information statewide to every health professional and resident in the state of West Virginia. Previously Mediasite™ was used only for providing online seminars to the local medical community. (read article)



The King Hussein Cancer Center in Amman, Jordan and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada strengthened their twinning program in oncology with regular videoconferencing sessions. 30 October 2006.
	30 October 2006. An article in the January 2007 issue of the journal “Pediatric Blood & Cancer” examines the use of videoconferencing between industrialized and developing countries as a way of improving patient care. The journal is available online via Wiley InterScience at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/pb... (read article)



Over 400 Canadian experts met in Edmonton last week to debate and learn what e-solutions telehealth can offer Canada’s future healthcare system; new directions were agreed. 12 October 2006.
	12 October 2006. The Canadian Society of Telehealth held its 9th annual conference at the Shaw Convention Center in Edmonton, Alberta From 14-17th October,. The Honourable Iris Evans, Alberta’s Health Minister, opened the conference ‘Telehealth - e-Solutions for Our Future’. The program offered workshops and roundtables by telehealth experts, plenary sessions by ... (read article)



Georgia recognises that teleradiology is a much timelier and more efficient process than the former way of producing films that were then sent manually by courier to a town 30 miles away. 12 September 2006
	12 September 2006. The Georgia Department of Insurance (DOI) and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia (BCBSGa) are to conduct a joint pilot program that will allow rural hospitals to purchase teleradiology equipment. The pilot program is made possible through a $1 million grant from the WellPoint Foundation. WellPoint, Inc. is the parent company of BCBSGa. Teleradiology is... (read article)



Trauma patients in rural areas of southern Arizona are treated by physicians at the University Medical Center (UMC) in Tucson; the lives of five of the 21 trauma patients treated so far were saved by telemedicine. 15 August 2006.
	15 August 2006. Trauma patients in rural areas of southern Arizona will soon be treated by physicians University Medical Center (UMC) in Tucso without having to spend precious time traveling to Tucson. They will use new telemedicine facitlites based on videoconferencing systems. UMC is home to the region's only Level 1 trauma center. According to UMC, this program is only... (read article)



The Department of Veterans Affairs uses videoconferncing to reach patients in rural areas. The treatment is similar to the care the hospital gives at outpatient centers around the state. 17 July 2006.
	Posted 17 July 2006. Truman Memorial Veterans' Hospital at Columbia, Mo. is using video-conferencing to provide members of the military at Fort Leonard Wood and Whiteman Air Force Base with mental health care. The service means military members don't have to travel to Columbia - about 130 miles from Fort Leonard Wood and 80 miles from Whiteman - to receive treatment tha... (read article)



For its telemedicine network, Kazakhstan turns to ND SatCom of Friedrichshafen, Germany, ... a leading supplier of satellite-based broadband VSAT network solutions.20 June 2006.
	20 June 2006. ND SatCom of Friedrichshafen, Germany is a leading global supplier of satellite-based broadband VSAT, broadcast and defence communication network solutions with more than 25 years experience. The company has announced that it has delivered 16 SkyWAN terminals which support telemedicine applications in Kazakhstan. It is a telemedicine pilot project which h... (read article)



The Provincial Government of Saskatchewan in Canada is expanding its telemedicine network called Telehealth Saskatchewan to eight new locations, making .. 26 locations in total 10 July 2006.
	10 July 2006. It was announced in March 2005 that Saskatchewan’s Telehealth network is expanding into eight new locations, using health funding committed at the 2004 First Ministers’ Meeting. The Telehealth network now includes 26 sites across the province, and serves about 5,500 Saskatchewan residents and health care providers every year. Saskatchewan Health approved n... (read article)



Doctors at the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) use Global Care Quest's ICIS Live to give them Mobile Access to the Video-Conferencing system located at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.1 June 2006.
	1 June 2006. Childrens Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) to give doctors remote access the hospital's video telemedicine system via notebook computers using GCQ's new ICIS Live mobile video-conferencing system. Currently physicians go to one of six regional hospitals with a specialized system to connect to the videoconferencing system in CHLA's Virtual Pediatric Intensive Care ... (read article)



European Commission’s eTEN programme is helping to promote the deployment of telemedicine with its HEALTH OPTIMUM project at Aragón in Spain, Veneto in Italy and Funen in Denmark. 5 June 2006.
	5 June 2006. Dr Javier Marco works in Barbastro Hospital in the Spanish Pyreness. It is the only hospital for a widely-distributed population. Many people live up to a hundred kilometres away, and the winters are hard and the roads can be bad. Dr. Marco now often checks his patients at their GP using a computer with a videoconferencing link. Many of his elderly patients... (read article)



U.S. Government Agencies described how their Foreign Assistance efforts are using Telemedicine to deliver medical help to remote populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 18 May 2006.
	18 May 2006. U.S. government officials and telemedicine experts described a range of international efforts in telemedicine and telehealth during a hearing of the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations on 16 May 2006. The purpose of the hearing, said Representative Jeff Fortenberry,... (read article)



'Operation Village Health' in Cambodia wins a Stockholm Challenge Award; the Internet-based Program links doctors at Harvard Medical School to Health Workers and hospitals in Cambodia. 25 May 2006.
	25 May 2006. Stockholm Challenge is a global initiative recognizing the benefits of information technology to communities around the world. The Challenge finalists were all honored at the award celebrations, attended by over 400 guests in the Stockholm City Hall last week. "Operation Village Health," an Internet-based health consultation program, linking Harvard M... (read article)



Southend Hospital in the UK chooses TANDBERG videoconferncing systems to improve care for cancer patients and reduce the waiting time for surgery for cancer patients most in need of care. 25 May 2006.
	25 May 2006. Southend NHS Trust has chosen TANDBERG to provide video communications as part of facilities improve care for cancer patients. The failities were designed by A/V systems integrator Video South Medical Television (See more below). The new technology will be used during the referral process of lung cancer patients, reducing the average waiting time fo... (read article)



National University of Singapore begins to use very-high-speed Broadband connections as lapscopic surgery (also known as key-hole surgery) requires images of the highest quality.15 May 2006.
	Posted 15 May 2006. At the National University of Singapore, 16 November 2005 marked a watershed day in NUS videoconferencing history. ISDN lines were put aside in favour of 30 Mbps high-speed broadband to conduct a telemedicine video conference. Dr Davide Lomanto, Director of the Minimally Invasive Surgical Centre (MISC) at NUH – a prime mover behind this tripartite collaborat... (read article)



Polycom’s VSX™ 7000 VC systems linked to microscope cameras broadcast live 12 ear, nose and throat surgical operations to six hospitals and 10 conference rooms across Europe and to India. 15 May 2006.
	15 May 2006. Polycom’s flagship VSX™ 7000 were used in the Live International Otolaryngology Network (LION), a live multipoint video conferencing ear, nose and throat surgeons teaching network, when the first LION workshop took place on 10 May. Six live sessions took place with each session consisting of two surgical procedures carried out simultaneously. T... (read article)



Telemedicine is most advanced in Russia which has more than 120 telemedical centers, from Sakhalin in the east to Kaliningrad in the west, all linked to 15 medical centers in Moscow and to one another. 15 May 2006.
	Posted 15 May 2006. All roads lead to Moscow In Russia - the world's largest country by geographical area with 11 time zones. It is the administrative, cultural and economic hub of Russia. It's also the health care hub, with 15 major medical centers serving Russia and the former Soviet republics by way of video communication. "Eight years ago we started video consultati... (read article)



ROY the robot paediatrician was created by the Centre for Online Health (COH) at the University of Queensland to treat children remotely at Gladstone hospital; it uses a Sony PCS-11P videoconferencing unit
	Posted 15 May 2006. ROY the robot paediatrician is the latest creation by the Centre for Online Health (COH) at the University of Queensland. ROY was developed in collaboration with the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane as a portable interactive online health system that can be easily mobilised around the Gladstone Hospitals paediatric ward. “In the middle of 2004 w... (read article)



The British Columbia Government is to expand its thoracic surgery service to more remote areas as high-speed internet and medical staff become available. Videoconferencing enables this. 21 April 2006.
	21 April 2006. Patients with chest diseases are receiving better and faster care regardless of where they live with the expansion of telethoracic services in rural and remote parts of northern British Columbia, announced Health Minister George Abbott. Speaking at a demonstration of the technology that now connects thoracic surgeons at a specialist centre in Kelowna to p... (read article)



British Columbia does not have enough doctors in rural areas; so medical students complete their studies in the North or on Vancouver Island using videoconferencing to connect to UBC. 24 April 2006
	Posted 24 April 2006. In October 2004, the University of British Columbia (UBC) expanded its intake of undergraduate medical students from 128 to 200. All the students spent their first term at UBC’s Vancouver campus, but in January 2005, 24 of the students moved to the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George and another 24 students to the University of Victori... (read article)



AstraZeneca helps rebuild New Orleans Health Care Network;The Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans receives $1 Million to Expand Health Management Programs and Telemedicine. 30 March 2006.
	30 March 2006. AstraZeneca, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, has presented $1 million to the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans (MCLNO) to help increase patient access to primary care and improve healthcare outcomes to citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. MCLNO is operated by the Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Care Services Divisi... (read article)



The West London Cancer Network uses inSORS videoconferencing solution to bring together the Multi Disciplinary Teams (MDT’s) from each of its 11 regional hospitals without travel
	26 June 2007. The West London Cancer Network (WLCN) is formed of 11 regional hospitals. As part of its ongoing drive for service improvement, it is keen to bring together the Multi Disciplinary Teams (MDT’s) from each of those hospitals. Taking very busy professionals away from their workplace though is clearly not a good option and so the WLCN has sought to develop... (read article)



Doctors at the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) use Global Care Quest's ICIS Live to give them Mobile Access to the Video-Conferencing system located at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit
	1 June 2006. Childrens Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) to give doctors remote access the hospital's video telemedicine system via notebook computers using GCQ's new ICIS Live mobile video-conferencing system. Currently physicians go to one of six regional hospitals with a specialized system to connect to the videoconferencing system in CHLA's Virtual Pediatric Intensive Care ... (read article)



European Commission’s eTEN programme is helping topromote the deployment of telemedicine with its HEALTH OPTIMUM project at Aragón in Spain, Veneto in Italy and Funen in Denmark
	Posted 5 June 2006. Dr Javier Marco works in Barbastro Hospital in the Spanish Pyreness. It is the only hospital for a widely-distributed population. Many people live up to a hundred kilometres away, and the winters are hard and the roads can be bad. Dr. Marco now often checks his patients at their GP using a computer with a videoconferencing link. Many of his elderly p... (read article)



Global Care Quest announces ICIS Live - a new System that will enable doctors to connect to nearly any hospital video telemedicine system with a laptop and mobile Internet connection
	25 May 2006. A stroke victim in a Kansas hospital receiving a visit from a neurosurgeon seated in a jet aeroplane high over the Pacific Ocean may sound like science fiction; but it is about to become a reality thanks to mobile healthcare systems developer Global Care Quest (GCQ). The company has announced ICIS Live, a system that allows physicians to connect to virtually any hospital v... (read article)



U.S. Government Agencies described how their Foreign Assistance efforts are using Telemedicine to deliver medical help to remote populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan on 16 May 2006
	18 May 2006. U.S. government officials and telemedicine experts described a range of international efforts in telemedicine and telehealth during a hearing of the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations on 16 May 2006. The purpose of the hearing, said Representative Jeff Fortenberry, a Repu... (read article)



'Operation Village Health' in Cambodia wins a Stockholm Challenge Award; the Internet-based Program links doctors at Harvard Medical School to Health Workers and hospitals in Cambodia
	25 May 2006. Stockholm Challenge is a global initiative recognizing the benefits of information technology to communities around the world. The Challenge finalists were all honored at the award celebrations, attended by over 400 guests in the Stockholm City Hall last week. "Operation Village Health," an Internet-based health consultation program, linking Harvard Medical School physician... (read article)



Southend Hospital in the UK chooses TANDBERG videoconferncing systems to improve care for cancer patients and reduce the waiting time for surgery for cancer patients most in need of care
	25 May 2006. Southend NHS Trust has chosen TANDBERG to provide video communications as part of facilities improve care for cancer patients. The failities were designed by A/V systems integrator Video South Medical Television (See more below). The new technology will be used during the referral process of lung cancer patients, reducing the average waiting time for surgery ... (read article)



National University of Singapore begins to use very-high-speed Broadband connections as lapscopic surgery (also known as key-hole surgery) requires images of the highest quality
	Posted 15 May 2006. At the National University of Singapore, 16 November 2005 marked a watershed day in NUS videoconferencing history. ISDN lines were put aside in favour of 30 Mbps high-speed broadband to conduct a telemedicine video conference. Dr Davide Lomanto, Director of the Minimally Invasive Surgical Centre (MISC) at NUH – a prime mover behind this tripartite collaborat... (read article)



ROY the robot paediatrician was created by the Centre for Online Health (COH) at the University of Queensland to treat children remotely at Gladstone hospital; it uses a Sony PCS-11P videoconferencing unit
	Posted 15 May 2006. ROY the robot paediatrician is the latest creation by the Centre for Online Health (COH) at the University of Queensland. ROY was developed in collaboration with the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane as a portable interactive online health system that can be easily mobilised around the Gladstone Hospitals paediatric ward. “In the middle of 2004 w... (read article)



Polycom’s VSX™ 7000 VC systems linked to microscope cameras broadcast live 12 ear, nose and throat surgical operations to six hospitals and 10 conference rooms across Europe and to India
	15 May 2006. Polycom’s flagship VSX™ 7000 were used in the Live International Otolaryngology Network (LION), a live multipoint video conferencing ear, nose and throat surgeons teaching network, when the first LION workshop took place on 10 May. Six live sessions took place with each session consisting of two surgical procedures carried out simultaneously. T... (read article)



Telemedicine is most advanced in Russia which has more than 120 telemedical centers, from Sakhalin in the east to Kaliningrad in the west, all linked to 15 medical centers in Moscow and to one another
	Posted 15 May 2006. All roads lead to Moscow In Russia - the world's largest country by geographical area with 11 time zones. It is the administrative, cultural and economic hub of Russia. It's also the health care hub, with 15 major medical centers serving Russia and the former Soviet republics by way of video communication. "Eight years ago we started video consultati... (read article)



The British Columbia Government is to expand its thoracic surgery service to more remote areas as high-speed internet and medical staff become available. Videoconferencing enables this
	21 April 2006. Patients with chest diseases are receiving better and faster care regardless of where they live with the expansion of telethoracic services in rural and remote parts of northern British Columbia, announced Health Minister George Abbott. Speaking at a demonstration of the technology that now connects thoracic surgeons at a specialist centre in Kelowna to p... (read article)



AstraZeneca helps rebuild New Orleans Health Care Network;The Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans receives $1 Million to Expand Health Management Programs and Telemedicine
	30 March 2006. AstraZeneca, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, has presented $1 million to the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans (MCLNO) to help increase patient access to primary care and improve healthcare outcomes to citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. MCLNO is operated by the Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Care Services Divisi... (read article)



The Northern Ireland Teleneurological Service serves a largely a rural area where both patients and medical staff would face extensive travelling time but use videoconferencing instead
	Posted 27 March 2006. The Northern Ireland Teleneurological Service being pioneered by Dr. Victor Patterson from Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital covers the whole of Northern Ireland. This, as he points out, is largely a rural area where both patients and medical staff face extensive travelling time to reach or provide the specialist medical treatment and care. “The chal... (read article)



LifeSize™is chosen as Interactive HD Video Solution to power Distant Edutainment/Learning Health Programs for children funded by The National Science Foundation in the United States
	21 March 2006. LifeSize Room™ high definition video communications system is being used as the interactive video solution for the Grossology LIVE program series to provide children distant edutainment in multiple U.S. cities. Centers currently hosting Grossology LIVE interactive video programs are located at the Columbus Children’s Hospital in Columbus, OH; HealthWorks! Kids’ Museum in... (read article)



Ireland is still divided politically; but joint health and social care initiatives developed by CAWT now better serve the 1 million inhabitants of this rural area irrespective of which side of the border they live on
	13 March 2006. There are 425 kilometres of border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland inhabited by just over 1million people. Cross border initiatives and projects have been developed to deliver health and social care initiatives to this rural area and videoconferencing is used to manage them. The Co-operation and Working Together (CAWT) organisation i... (read article)



California Telemedicine and eHealth Center (CTEC) helped to extend telemedicine services to community clinics and health centers in the rural areas of San Diego, Riverside and Imperial Counties.
	Posted 27 February 2006. The Alpine Community Clinic is one of 13 rural health centers in San Diego, Riverside and Imperial County to use video conferencing to bring specialists to patients through telemedicine. "It saves time for the patient. Patients are happy when I tell them they have easy access to a specialist without getting in the car to drive" internal medicine s... (read article)



Telemedicine will play a key role in American HealthChoice’s future and the future of healthcare; the company has VC systems operating in 14 of its 50 clinics in Texas, Tennessee and Kansa
	Posted 27 February 2006. American HealthChoice, Inc. has announced that more than 500 patients in Texas utilized its TeleMedicine systems in 2005, resulting in patient billings topping more than $112,000. American HealthChoice is a medical services company comprised of a parent company and 50 company-owned and affiliated medical clinics in Texas, Tennessee and Kansas. T... (read article)



Johns Hopkins University Medical School is making its clinical findings on combatting infestiuous deseases to healthcare workers around the World using Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite
	6 February 2006. The primary goal of the Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education is to provide long-term clinical training through distance education programs that give access to the expertise of the clinical faculty of the Medical School of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, near Washington D.C. CCGHE is using Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite... (read article)

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