News & Information - The Mercury - May 2008 Mercury

Story and photo by Kevin Downey
Tripler Army Medical Center, Hawaii

	Maj. Pedro Lucero explains capabilities of the telemedicine system at Tripler Army Medical Center.

Doctors in the intensive care unit at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii are using telemedicine technology called "electronic ICU," or eICU, to care for critically ill patients in Guam and Korea, helping save lives and reduce medical evacuation costs in the process.

With high-resolution cameras fed into a bank of computers with real-time transmissions, critical-care specialists can examine, diagnose and monitor intensive-care unit patients in conjunction with bed-side local doctors.

"We have the expertise and the capacity to participate in the care of those patients, and I think this system is a great way of projecting that expertise to those smaller facilities," said retired Col. Benjamin Berg, an intensivist at the University of Hawaii's Telehealth Research Institute.

Critical patients can be stabilized under the direction of intensivists at Tripler using this system, Berg said, possibly eliminating or delaying the need for air evacuation at a cost of more than $100,000. If need be, stabilized patients can be brought to Tripler on a regularly scheduled medical flight mission when they are in better condition to fly, saving money and resources.

The fiber-optic, internet-based technology was used after a boiler room explosion on the Guam-based submarine tender USS Frank Cable in December 2006. The ability of surgical and critical-care specialists to remotely examine and triage the sailors helped with the initial stabilization and evacuation of the severely burned sailors.

"This program has provided the hospital's physicians, particularly in the intensive-care unit, immediate access to critical-care specialists, such as cardiologists and pulmonologists, at Tripler," said Navy Lieutenant Robert Krejci, U.S. Naval Hospital Guam's eICU program manager. "It's available to physicians on a 24-hour basis and has improved our ability to provide patients here with a higher standard of care."

The consulting doctors at Tripler are able to quickly view a patient's chart, labs, and other data, as well as directly see the patient using a video camera, simulating a near hands-on practice of medicine, he said.

From the May 2008 Mercury, an Army Medical Department publication.