By Scott Dyer
The Advocate
BATON ROUGE, La. — Baton Rouge on Thursday became the second city in the United States to implement a telemedicine program that allows doctors to treat patients en route to the emergency room, city-parish officials said.
Initially, the specially equipped ambulance will communicate only with Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, but plans call for the program to be expanded to all seven major area hospitals with federal Homeland Security funds, said Chad Guillot, assistant director of Emergency Medical Services.
Our Lady of the Lake was selected for the pilot program because it already uses a hard-wired telemedicine system to monitor intensive-care patients from a central location, he said.
The ambulance in the “BR Med-Connect” program will use the same wireless mesh network that police are using for their new high-tech surveillance system, which includes not only video cameras but shot-spotters that detect the origin of gunshots.
The city-parish program consists of one ambulance equipped with $25,000 worth of equipment.
When linked to another $30,000 in equipment at a hospital, the system will allow doctors not only to see and communicate with EMS patients, and also to monitor data from diagnostic machines.
Guillot said equipment for the ambulance was funded by self-generated funds from the EMS budget. Future plans call for the program to be expanded to include other ambulances, he said.
The only other American city with a similar ambulance program is Tucson, Ariz., Guillot said. But he noted that the technology is widely used overseas in countries with a shortage of physicians and hospitals.
Mayor-President Kip Holden said he first saw a telemedicine ambulance during a 2007 conference in Jerusalem. He was so impressed with the system in Jerusalem that he started work on a Baton Rouge version as soon as he returned home.
Holden noted that the first hour after a heart attack or stroke is critical.
The new telemedicine program will allow physicians to begin treatment as soon as a patient is loaded into an ambulance.
The mayor also noted the new system can help to save accident victims and other trauma cases, especially in cases involving long transports.
Don Evans, city-parish director of Information Services, said the same wireless mesh network that powers the telemedicine program and the law-enforcement surveillance canopy is being expanded to included other city-parish functions that involve data transfers. For instance, it may soon be used by building inspectors and even Animal Control, he said.
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