NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

UK physical therapy provider, Dr. Lynn English, used Tele-Medicine through the UK TeleHealth Network to provide a wheel-chair fitting consultation for 2 year-old Centro Medico Hombro a Hombro patient, a two and a half year old boy with  This international, bi-lingual and cross-cultural exchange was made possible with the help of Rob Sprang, MBA, Director of Kentucky TeleCare Network, the Telehealth program at the University of Kentucky; Ronald Ikechi, the Peace Corps Volunteer at Centro Medico Hombro a Hombro; Dr. Jaime Srinath, the Clinic Systems Coordinator for UK Healthcare; and Dr. Lynn English, who not only travelled to Ecuador with the donated wheelchair but also arranged for the chair-fitting with the child’s family and UK faculty.

With the success of this first telemedicine conference, future possibilities for telemedicine applications between the UK and the Shoulder to Shoulder Global site in Ecuador include:

• Administrative meetings (Face to face meetings and sharing computer-based presentations with Ecuador).
• Educational programs. Ecuador can participate in UK educational programs.  The clinic can connect for grand rounds programs and any special programs created just for the Shoulder-to-Shoulder clinic.
• Clinical services – With the addition of the camcorder, we can do high-resolution images for dermatology, wound care and other clinical service lines as well as activities that require gross motor movement observation, such as PT, OT, SLP and other services.

Rob Sprang commented, “We can also use the technology to immerse our faculty and trainees into the Shoulder-to-Shoulder concept by allowing them to participate in this kind of mission outreach.  Maybe they cannot physically travel there, but we can give them a taste of what it is like.  Maybe this will raise consciousness of this work and more will consider going to Ecuador to work with the project.  You can also take your camcorder and go outside the clinic, recording what you see in the community and then bring it back and play it through the video system for us to see.

There are dozens of uses; we just need to be creative.”