The Arizona Telemedicine Program Blog

When a woman’s breast cancer metastasized to her knee, University of Arizona orthopaedic surgeons Jordan Smith, MD, and Jason Wild, MD, used Google Glass to turn an exceedingly rare case of patellar reconstruction into an exceptionally teachable moment.

Kimberly Shea, PhD, RN, assistant professor at the UA College of Nursing, will examine the use of real-time video from mini iPads to visualize patients, their environment, and medications. The study will support on-call hospice nurses’ management of patients’ physical and emotional symptoms, while helping reduce caregiver stress and discomfort.

These studies and 11 others have received funding from the Arizona Telemedicine Program (ATP), through its competitive Innovation Awards program, launched in December 2013. ATP Innovation Awards provide equipment grants of up to $2,500 to Arizona Health Sciences Center researchers who want to explore the potential of Google Glass, tablets and other mobile technologies in health care.

When Pete Yonsetto applied for an opening with the Arizona Telemedicine Program, he wasn’t sure it was the right job for him.

But a college professor was adamant. “Apply!” she ordered. So he did. And he got the job.

Today – 14 years later – there is no doubt in Yonsetto’s mind that the job is a perfect fit. Telemedicine is all about connections. And so is he.

Mariposa Community Health Center got its start in 1980 as a small clinic in Nogales, Arizona. It has grown over the years to be the largest provider of medical, dental and community-based health promotion and disease prevention services on the Arizona-Mexico border. 

And in 1996, the clinic expanded its reach by becoming the first clinical site to link to the Arizona Telemedicine Program.

The decision was not a no-brainer. For many Nogales families, going to see a doctor in Tucson, 60 miles away, was a fun family outing, with lunch and shopping on the side. But for many others, the transportation logistics were next to impossible. For them, telemedicine would be a godsend.

But there were concerns about how well it would work.

In Arizona, Sara Gibson, MD, a psychiatrist with Northern Arizona Regional Behavioral Health Authority in Flagstaff, was the first to practice psychiatry via telemedicine.

It was November 1996, and Gibson had just returned to work after being on maternity leave. “I was covering Apache County, on the New Mexico border, where there are only two towns, St. Johns and Springerville,” she recalls.

I hate telemedicine. Actually, to be more specific, I hate the word, telemedicine. It conjures visions of technology, not care—something futuristic, expensive, something only for people far away.

However, at it’s core, telemedicine is an opportunity to change how we care for each other by bringing people together in time, enabling “reassurance” when we or a loved one is most vulnerable.

Most people think of telemedicine as two people brought together over video for care. In healthcare there are advantages of video over voice. Looking another person in the eye, even via a monitor, provides the blink, the sense for the provider of the patient’s over all health. And for the patient, there is a sense of comfort, that the other person sees me, understands me. However, video alone is not the answer. 

To truly transform care, the technology has evolved, incorporating other forms of communication and workflow requirements. Texting and voice are the methods of choice for providers to talk to other providers and for providers to talk to patients. Workflow—the ability to schedule and to have comfort there will be someone to answer the “call”—is now part of the solution.