The Arizona Telemedicine Program Blog

The Arizona Telemedicine Program (ATP), a national leader in providing broadband telemedicine services, recently embraced a partnership with Arizona SciTech that has amplified STEM outreach efforts throughout the Grand Canyon State.

In February 2015, ATP collaborated with Arizona SciTech to produce the 2015 Arizona SciTech kickoff event, a virtual press conference. The event, itself a STEM tour de force, connected nine locations across the state, giving communities from Clarkdale to Safford the opportunity to highlight their upcoming STEM events. With the participation of seven mayors, the teleconference made a powerful statement about the importance of STEM in Arizona.

At a time when small rural hospitals are increasingly closing their doors, Bisbee’s Copper Queen Community Hospital is bucking the trend.

One can point to a number of reasons why the 14-bed critical access hospital, 10 miles north of the Arizona-Mexico border, is able to maintain a healthy bottom line. One reason is Copper Queen’s robust use of telemedicine.

I was vacationing in a tiny, remote mountain town on the east coast last summer when I became ill. It was a Sunday evening and the local urgent care center didn’t open until the next morning. I didn’t want to wait 15 hours for urgent care, and I didn’t want to be driven to the regional ER, where I might have to wait a long time to be seen—and might be exposed to something contagious while in the waiting room.

Internet and Wirelessly Connected Medical Devices (“Devices”) are a cybersecurity concern of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as evidenced by guidance it issued in October 2014. The FDA Guidance does not have the force of law—but is highly influential in the medical device industry. Likely, failure of compliance will delay or prevent FDA approvals of such Devices.

Rifat Latifi, MD, general and trauma surgeon, professor of surgery at the UA and associate director of the Arizona Telemedicine Program, put all that on hold four years ago to direct the only Level One trauma program in Qatar – and to develop new health-care systems in the war-torn part of the world where he was born and grew up.