of telecommunications applications and services featuring two-way video, smart phones, email, wireless tools and other forms of telecommunication. Through its use, patient and doctor converse
“face-to-face” across vast distances,
with accompanying medical data made available to the physician immediately. What seemed a generation ago to
be futuristic and other-worldly, today’s
telemedicine routinely involves the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients
through live high-speed, high-resolution video connections. It can mean access to specialized care in rural Arkansas
communities, sometimes available to
these patients “locally” for the first time. Gosselin’s fourth pregnancy in 2016
also resulted in the need for ANGELS
consultations with UAMS specialists on the main campus in Little Rock.
“I needed several ultrasounds, which
would have required several trips to
Little Rock,” Gosselin says. “Through the
ANGELS telemedicine connections, I was able to have my level 2 ultrasounds done at the northwest campus, but interpreted in Little Rock. I could stay in Northwest
Arkansas and take care of my children,
and my husband didn’t need to take off work to travel with me. He could even
come over on his lunch break to attend
my telemedicine appointments. Thanks to the ANGELS telemedicine program, we were able to get immediate results and talk to the doctor about our concerns.”
SPREAD THIN Despite decades of growth in Arkansas’s urban areas, the state remains largely rural with hundreds of small towns and a widelydispersed population. Many communities and counties simply don’t have the population density necessary to support a variety of medical specialists. In the early 2000s, Curtis Lowery, MD, chair of the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, began the quest to connect medical
expertise in the state’s urban areas to patients in rural Arkansas. Specifically, he wanted mothers-to-be with high-risk pregnancies living in rural communities throughout Arkansas to have access to the obstetrical expertise they and their unborn babies required for the delivery of healthy infants. His mantra became, “Where you live shouldn’t determine whether you live or die.” In the early 1990s, UAMS had begun a small distance education program using live video classes for nursing education and another early telemedicine outreach programs aimed at a handful of rural hospitals. The emphasis was on
Center every day, around-the-clock. They provide counseling, telephone
triage of immediate health concerns and education concerning health
problems during pregnancy. In 2016,
the Call Center managed 175,728 calls, including 417 obstetrical consultations and 12,957 nurse triage calls.
Through telemedicine and distance
health tools, UAMS, for more than a
decade, has delivered subspecialty care services to high-risk Arkansas mothers and their fragile infants.
Jackie Gosselin, her husband and
their four healthy children, are thankful for it.
education. Lowery looked at this education program and realized the potential it held for patient care. The UAMS distance learning program expanded into the distance health program. Over time, the use of new mobile devices like tablets and smart phones would enable on-call physicians the freedom to travel, so long as they could connect to the Internet. One specialist could take call for the entire state, allowing others to get their much-needed rest. And then, the possibilities expanded beyond imagination. “It’s a game-changing technology for health care,” Lowery says.
BIRTH OF ANGELS Lowery, along with Tina Benton,
BSN, RN, and a small team of clinicians and staff, in 2003 founded ANGELS and the UAMS Center for Distance
Health to bring maternal-fetal medicine to pregnant women across the state needing medical help with their
pregnancies, but living too far from required specialists.
Over the years, the program has
expanded exponentially. Today,
experienced registered nurses staff
the Center for Distance Health’s Call ARKANSAS HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION . 23