The Doctor Is Online – and on Webcam

8 business The Moscow News №20 / 20 – 22 March 2012 The Moscow News №20 / 20 – 22 March 2012 business 9 The capabilities of modern telemedicine remotely shares medical images O NK / ALEXEY KUDE / I RIA NOVOST RIA At the department of neurosurgery at Sklifosovsky hospital in Moscow archives and retrieves diagnostic-quality captures video signals from medical devices allowing doctors to remotely supervise medical images from any medical device medical procedures that has a video display and provide remote consultation in O NK OST ar T S EY R D N / ALEXEY KUDE / / A / I I OVOST N RIA NOVOST RIA ria The operating theater at Ufa’s Russian Eye and Plastic Surgery Center Laser technology in a Smolensk plant technology hospital-to-hospital remote settlements, emergency high risk military sport teams ships spacecraft mountains for consultations villages, towns situations zones and combat elds The doctor is online – RIA NOVOSTI and on webcam New developments in ‘telemedicine’ could soon become available to the public, revolutionizing treatment of illness in Russia Oleg Nikishenkov International Space Station,” U.S. “You open the image, log in to to conduct the study had been in ment 2020 initiative—such as the themoscownews astronaut Leroy Chiao said. Chiao Skype, and you can discuss the place before the project. computerization of local clinics and his crewmate, Russian cosmo- capture with your patient or fellow Flerov told The Moscow News and hospitals—take effect, it could Since the 1990s, the Internet has naut Salizhan Sharipov, conducted doctor, who may be in another that modern medicine is already be overcome. continued to redefine communica- what NASA called an “advanced hemisphere,” he said. unthinkable without telemedicine. Sandler is optimistic about the tion, the media, education, retail, diagnostic ultrasound in micro- “It has become as indispensable technology’s prospects in Russia. entertainment, and travel. Rapidly gravity” on expedition 10 to the Already ‘indispensable’ as a PC in your office,” he said. With Epiphan Labs, he hopes not developing imaging technologies space station, which took place in The Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, “But the question is, what quality only to sell equipment, but also to could come to revolutionize medi- 2004 and 2005. Epiphan Systems the size of France and with a of images we are talking about.” conduct research and development. cal treatment, as well, making it provided the equipment to capture, population of 20 million, has dem- Fully half of his staff are graduates possible for a doctor in Moscow to convert to digital format, compress, onstrated this with the “Health Connectivity a potential obstacle of top Russian technical universi- diagnose an illness for a patient in and send to Earth images from the at Home” project, which studied Sandler believes that in a huge ties, he said. Vladivostok. ultrasound machine’s display, all in the cardiac health of residents country like Russia, telemedicine Epiphan Labs, a subsidiary of real time. The diagnoses made from of 675 villages and cities using will be useful in treating people R Quick to learn Ottawa-based Epiphan Systems, has the extraterrestrial ultrasounds telemedicine. Echocardiograms living in remote regions. DLE Further, the technology has proven San taken up residence in the biomedi- were supervised on the ground by from around the state were sent “In Russia, many good doctors E easy to use. cal cluster at the Skolkovo Founda- Scott Dulchavsky, head of surgery IK “I am not a doctor, but literally, tion to apply its parent company’s at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. within a few hours of training TESY OF M OF TESY video-streaming technology to New telemedical technology has For residents of Russia’s remote regions, R I was able to learn how to use medical use. been tested not only in space, but COU the ultrasound machine on board “Our technology allows us to cap- on ships on the open ocean and telemedicine could be very useful Mike Sandler CEO of Epiphan Systems the ISS, and get the best-quality O ture and transfer images from any in the Himalayas. Yevgeny Flerov, images,” said Chiao, the astro- Cia OY R D I E type of medical equipment which head of the Moscow-based Tele- to the university medical center in went to live in central cities like project was so inexpensive was the naut. L has a monitor, such as a probe, and medicine Laboratory at the Russian the capital, Belo Horizonte, on the Moscow or St. Petersburg,” he said. extant infrastructure needed to If similar training and universal UT na O BOGODV to send them using the Internet,” Academy of Sciences, said that Internet. “But it doesn’t mean that people conduct it. Internet service were available R im ST S said Epiphan founder Mike Sandler, it is possible to send mega-high- “The experiment cost no more in the regions get ill less, so they The lack of Internet service in throughout Russia, then elderly A ak a Russian-born Canadian engineer. definition images, such as optically than $200 per village,” the RAS’s need online consultations from far-flung Russian communities people in particular could avoid M / I converted high-resolution X-rays, Telemedicine Lab web site said, good specialists.” could impede development of waiting in reception rooms to see TESY OF THE OVOST R Experiments in space right to a computer monitor in pointing out that the entire state While solving one problem, the telemedicine in the country, but a physician. Some obstacles still N OU C “The technology came from an a doctor’s office, just using the had already been connected to technology raises some others. if modernizing steps included in remain, but the benefits of the ria experiment made on board the Internet. the Internet, so the infrastructure One of the reasons the Brazilian the government’s Health Develop- technology are within reach. n Austronaut Leroy Chiao gives cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov an ultrasound Innovative surgery techniques in Kazan.

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