Med school, support group seek telemedicine system

Patients whose conditions require travel outside Rockford may soon be spending more of their treatment time in front of a television camera instead of on the road.

The University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford, with the help of a local support group of the Illinois Chapter of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, is seeking to raise $150,000 for a telemedicine system that allows a patient in one location to be examined by a physician or other specialist through a computer-supported teleconference.

Ted Ross, president of the local Huntington’s disease support group, said the group is interested in the system because the approximately 30 Huntington’s sufferers in the Rockford area must now travel to Rush University in Chicago or Marshfield Clinic in Madison, Wis., for treatment.

Huntington’s disease is a neurogenerative disease that causes progressive death of the nerve cells in the brain. It affects the patient’s physical and mental abilities and emotions, and is often accompanied by other illnesses.

A telemedicine system, Ross said, would cut a treatment session that, with travel time, now involves virtually all day for a Huntington’s patient to an hour or two.

Product demonstrated
Members of the local group, along with Dr. Mitchell King, the college of medicine’s associate dean for academic affairs, and Rick Hampton, acting director of the university’s telehealth programs, attended a teleconference Saturday with Global Media Group intern Matthew Bathelemy, who demonstrated the company’s telemedicine system from an office in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The system includes a mobile video cart, which has a high-definition camera about the size of a small flashlight with the ability to zoom onto various body parts including into the throat, and may also be equipped with such tools as a stethoscope or otoscope.

The camera can also freeze a frame for closer examination or show a wide-angle view that would allow the specialist to watch the patient perform in a test such as walking around the room.

The cart also includes a computer and a television monitor on which the doctor at the other end of the teleconference would appear to the patient and a doctor or nurse and any other people needed for the visit.

With the mobile cart, King said, a doctor or nurse could help the specialist who has a receiving console at the other end of the teleconference conduct an examination of the patient.

King said the college already uses a similar telemedicine system to allow an endocrinologist at the college’s Belvidere clinic to treat diabetes patients at its Mount Morris clinic.

Where the money would go
The plan is to set up the mobile video cart, which costs about $40,000 depending on how it is set up, at the college of medicine and to provide a receiving console, which costs about $15,000, to Dr. Kathleen Shannon, a movement disorders specialist at Rush University who treats many of the local Huntington’s disease patients.

Ross said the remaining $95,000 would be used to cover the cost of services that can’t be billed to insurance.

“As part of the building expansion here,” King said, “we’re going to have a patient care suite that’s going to be used to teach medical students on simulated patients, but we want to incorporate this equipment into clinical use as well so that, if we are able to have one of these carts, we could take that from exam room to exam room and have a clinic day or two days for patients.”  

The cart can be adapted to aid examinations for all types of medical conditions and King said that would support the work of the college of medicine’s center for rural health.

“We envisioned this as a hub with spokes going out in all directions,” he said. “The smaller the town, the farther you get from the city, the harder it is to see any type of specialist.”

Hampton said federal stimulus money will eventually assist electronic medical systems “because the delivery of medical services is definitely going in this direction.”

Ross said the college and the local support group are seeking grants from local foundations and other local donations.

“I’ll speak strictly for myself,” Ross said, “when I say we’re going to find the money.”

Staff writer Mike DeDoncker can be reached at mdedoncker@rrstar.com or 815-987-1382.