SCOTLAND: Video link revolution for Scots patients

In “The HERALD” – Glasgow

Reproduced with kind permission from The Herald (Glasgow); © Newsquest Media Group

HELEN PUTTICK, Health Correspondent

October 20 2006

Patients could be diagnosed by video conference in hospitals across Scotland under a drive to boost the use of technology in the NHS.

A National Centre for Telehealth is being launched next week and will develop a Scotland-wide strategy for exploiting IT to look after people from a distance.

The potential to provide some specialist medical cover across the entire country from one centre at night, with consultants examining patients by video phone, is among the possibilities.

A pilot in Grampian has already seen patients with neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis being diagnosed by a consultant in Northern Ireland.

Surveys found all 48 people who took part in the project were satisfied with their consultation, which involved a trained nurse performing physical tests in Aberdeen while the consultant in Belfast observed and focused on different body parts by remotely operating a camera.

The Scottish Centre for Telehealth is being launched at a time when laws on the hours doctors work and other staffing pressures are forcing specialist medical services into fewer hospitals.

Professor Gordon Peterkin, director of the Scottish Centre for Telehealth, said telemedicine could ensure patients were still seen by a consultant without travelling longer distances.

There are already a number of telemedicine projects for certain conditions operating in different parts of Scotland.

However, Professor Peterkin said: "We want to try and get away from the little projects to this becoming part of policy and strategy, to people who are re-designing services locally thinking 'how do we use this brand of new technology locally in a sensible way?"

He added that for certain specialist medical areas there could be currently multiple consultants on-call across Scotland at night, seeing perhaps one or two patients every two nights.

"We have the potential to start thinking how do we make this system work so we have . people using their time more effectively," he said. "Overnight do you have one paediatrician covering the whole of Scotland for this particular field? At the moment we have three. You can start to think about how you schedule things differently."

Professor Peterkin, a former GP, admitted the idea of seeing a doctor on screen could be controversial.

He said: "There are people who are going to say there is nothing to beat having yet more doctors and yet more nurses. We cannot afford to have yet more doctors and yet more nurses. We have got a big increase, certainly, in consultant staff and we have to think how we use those resources more effectively."

Monitoring people who have long-term health problems in their own home using medical tools and mobile phone will also be explored by the telehealth centre.

In the future, patients could conduct tests, such as breathing and blood-sugar level checks, on themselves and send the results to a hospital via mobile.

Abnormal readings could trigger medical intervention.

Professor Peterkin said: "It would help patients because they would feel more supported and from the perspective of the health care system they would not require to be in hospital."

Dr Robert Cumming, a retired consultant and chairman of the Scottish Health Campaigns Network – a body which united groups protesting against hospital service closures, said Scotland had been slow to harness the potential of telemedicine compared with other countries with remote communities, such as Norway and Iceland.

Dr Cumming said: "Telemedicine has got the potential to keep patients nearer home and not necessarily having to travel miles just to receive a diagnosis."

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