A University of Arizona College of Pharmacy program is saving Arizonans millions of dollars a year in health-care costs.
It’s the pharmacy college’s Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center – a public service in operation since1955, when it became the second poison center in the country; the first was launched in Chicago, in 1953.
Parents in rural Arizona used to have just one option if they were worried their child had autism: They had to pack the family into the car and drive for hours to see a developmental pediatrician in Phoenix or Tucson.
Now there’s a program that utilizes telemedicine to provide timely evaluation and diagnosis of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), so families who live in rural and underserved areas – including Hispanic and Native American communities – don’t have to travel far.
A medical breakthrough in 1986 has changed the practice of medicine around the world: the invention of telepathology, the diagnosis of surgical pathology slides at a distance.
Invented, patented and commercialized by Ronald S. Weinstein, MD, University of Arizona professor of pathology and founding director of the Arizona Telemedicine Program, telepathology was demonstrated in 1986. A 66-year-old breast cancer patient in El Paso, Texas, had her breast biopsy diagnosis verified by a surgical pathologist in Washington, D.C., via satellite communications and tele-robotic light microscopy.
What would you guess is the most pressing regulatory topic facing state medical boards?
Opioid prescribing? Physician re-entry into practice? Medical marijuana?
Those are all on the list of results from a Federation of State Medical Boards survey.
But it’s telemedicine that ranks No. 1.
When you hear the phrase “telehealth connections,” you probably think of the literal connection—through wires or Wi-Fi, through dedicated circuits or the internet—between the patient and the health-care provider.
But one telemedicine program is taking pains to ensure that telehealth includes a strong human connection, too.
