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Imagine a children’s hospital without walls; a hospital that put’s the very best clinicians and specialist doctors in the same room as the child, regardless of how remote the hospital is.
Imagine Variety’s Vision for Life.
Under the “Care for Kids” program, Variety NSW is a long term supporter of the Newborn and Pediatric Emergency Transport Service. Based in the grounds of a major Sydney Children’s Hospital, the children’s emergency transport service provides critical remote consultation and, if required, road or helicopter transport for sick or injured children from rural and regional hospitals to specialist city hospitals.
Variety NSW has purchased four vital children’s road ambulances for the service and is the naming rights sponsor of the services communication hub. Till now, most remote diagnosis of a premature baby, sick or injured child has been by telephone, without any ability to “see” the child, leaving room for error and misdiagnosis.
By providing state of the art high definition tele-medicine vision, not only will children’s lives be saved and recovery aided, but Variety’s Vision for Life will save money and family disruption by preventing unnecessary transport of a child.
Recently, a small mid western NSW hospital reported a 4 year old girl with severe burns to the emergency transport service. Unable to see the child and based on the description given, the service dispatched a helicopter to retrieve the child and return her to a specialist burns unit in a major Sydney children’s hospital. Not able to ride in the helicopter, the child’s family began a 6 hour drive to Sydney.
The good news after the little girl arrived at the burns unit is the burns were quite minor and she would make a full recovery. The bad news was it cost $28,000 to retrieve a child that didn’t require transport and could have been treated in the local hospital. Not only did this create great disruption for the family, but a great deal of money was spent when it wasn’t required.
Alternatively, the service specialist doctors took a call from a small north coast regional hospital describing a child as “blue”. Not able to see the child, the doctors began various respiratory diagnosis and tests. Sadly, the boy was blue due to the deadly meningococcal rash, and the child’s life was lost.
In both cases, had vision of the child been available, it is very likely the boy would still be alive and a lot of time and money saved through not unnecessarily transporting the four year old girl.
Variety’s Vision for Life program will provide an IP based high definition video tele-medicine system between the communications hub at the emergency transport service, regional and remote hospitals and specialist doctors and clinicians, no matter where they are.
Based around IP technology, the Vision for Life system will connect 254 hospitals in NSW to the emergency transport service communication hub. Specialists can remotely connect to the hub from anywhere in Australia, or the world, to not only see the child, but also control the camera and technology to ensure local doctors and nurses are not distracted from the job at hand by the technology. The system is two way, allowing local doctors and nurses to also see the specialist. In many cases, vital signs monitoring can also be transmitted across the system.
The system is compatible with and will mesh into the NSW Department of Health’s existing and future tele-health systems.
Although Variety Vision for Life will roll out in NSW first, the Variety Australian Association hopes to take the program national to 1392 hospitals in the future.
The Variety Vision for Life telemedicine system will cost around $25,000 per hospital, so only one unnecessary helicopter trip needs to be saved and the system has paid for itself, let alone provided the priceless ability of saving a child’s life.
Variety NSW has just launched Vision for Life through a Radiothon on Sydney station, 2UE and the communications hub and first ten hospitals will be operational by early 2011.