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Written by Rob Williams
on November 4, 2013
Many small communities throughout Ontario don’t have a local psychiatrist, so it can be challenging at times for people in these communities to receive psychiatric services. Telepsychiatry gives people in these communities the opportunity to interact one-on-one with a psychiatrist from another part of the province. Moreover, people with mobility issues need only to travel to a local Telehealth studio, rather than to a psychiatrist’s office.
We’ve had very positive reactions from people that have participated in one-to-one psychiatric patient videos. The patients feel very comfortable – in fact, we’ve had some patients tell us they’re... | |
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Written by Stewart Stein
on October 25, 2013
We interrupt our regularly scheduled Telederm blog for an important announcement: Otn.teledermSF is getting a facelift! Having processed over 10,000 dermatology consults, Otn.teledermSF will be upgraded to a new version (with the decidedly pragmatic name of 7.0.8) which incorporates improvements based on feedback we've received from our users.
The upgraded version will be available in December and OTN will provide lots of advance notice of the change to the new version as well as any necessary training materials.
Here are some of the new features:
Mac compatibility. Until OTN started providing Otn.teldermSF to primary care providers around the province, I did not fully appreciate just how many FPs/GPs are using Mac computers. Once... | |
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Written by Rob Williams
on October 16, 2013
 | More than a decade ago, a new approach to treating an acute stroke was developed that involved administering tPA within 3-4 hours of the onset of an acute ischemic stroke. tPA dissolves a clot and restores circulation, resulting in a dramatic patient recovery. Where tPA was effective, most patients were able to resume their lives rather than being permanently disabled with paralysis and/or neurological loss.
The issue with administering tPA is that not all strokes are caused by a blood clot; sometimes the strokes are caused by a hemorrhage into the brain. If tPA is given to these patients the stroke is made worse. The standard of care in most jurisdictions, is that a... |
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Written by Stewart Stein
on September 16, 2013
Not long ago, my wife and I took a road trip to Montreal from Toronto. I take highway driving "seriously" and was very focused on the road. It was a beautiful day and we drove along watching the scenery roll by in a blissful contemplative silence…or so I thought. When we hit Kingston my wife couldn't contain herself anymore, "What’s with you?! You haven’t said a word!". Clearly we had different expectations of my driverly duties.
I have had the opportunity to speak with many of the dermatologists participating in OTN’s TeledermSF program. Trust me, I’m not suggesting that any of the derms are in anyway approaching any kind of acrimony that I managed to achieve with my driving partner.... | |
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Written by Rob Williams
on September 4, 2013
Back in 2007 OTN’s primary focus was extending telemedicine – in the form of real-time videoconferencing – beyond hospitals, but we were also examining how to expand our program offerings. “Store forward” – an application that allows information to be sent to a secure server where it can be downloaded at another time – had been used for years in the United States, in particular, at Veterans Affairs and the Alaska Federal Health Care Access Network (AFHCAN). There were also a number of papers and presentations delivered at ATA on store forward use in dermatology. OTN decided to... | |
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Written by Rob Williams
on August 27, 2013
As I discussed in my previous post, Telemedicine has a variety of applications. Telemedicine also delivers significant benefits for GPs. For example, Otn.teledermSF is a service that enables a referring doctor to consult quickly with a dermatologist anywhere in Ontario. A photograph of a patient’s skin condition, plus pertinent health information, is sent by the GP or RN at the office for review by the specialist, who assesses the information and provides a treatment plan, generally in less than five days. For the patient, wait time is shortened, costs are reduced and inconvenience is lessened. For the GP, a treatment path... | |
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Written by Rob Williams
on August 27, 2013
In my previous post on the ways OTN is linking the healthcare community in Ontario, I reviewed how the Northeast Cancer Centre (NCC) is using virtual care to improve both the patient and physician experience. Here are a few more examples of telemedicine in action:
Neurotrauma follow-up: A patient in a remote community with post-injury epilepsy, cognitive impairments and mobility issues travelled alone every few months to Toronto for follow-up consultations with a neurologist. Anxiety related to travel and the disruption of the patient’s routine interfered with the progress and success of his recovery. When his follow-up appointments with... | |
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Written by Rob Williams
on August 27, 2013
Telemedicine, the provision of health care by means of telecommunications and information technology, is a reality in Ontario. In the fiscal year 2012-13, more than 300,000 patients received care through telemedicine, a 51% increase over 2011-12.
From April 1998, when Ontario’s first telemedicine sites launched at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Timmins and District, Kirkland and District and the then Lady Minto hospitals, OTN has grown to more than 100 sites across the province. Geography has been eliminated as a barrier for many patients in Ontario.
An Introduction to Telemedicine
What telemedicine practitioners who have shared their clinical experiences with me helped me realized is that “telemedicine is not a service -... | |
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