Doctors and patients around the state will now be able to benefit from the experience and sophistication of the state's largest medical center without leaving their homes.
A new online communications system will link Charleston Area Medical Center with more than 7,000 doctors around the state. In particular, physicians hope the new tool will have a dramatic impact on diabetes, which afflicts roughly 10 percent of the population, the fourth-highest in the nation.
The technology is called Mediasite, which was developed by the Wisconsin-based Sonic Foundry Inc. Originally adopted by colleges and universities, the system has rapidly spread to hospitals and health-care centers looking for a way to practically impart information to large numbers of people.
"This is about time-shifting, and not being required to herd large numbers of people into the same room,'' said Sonic Foundry vice president Erica St. Angel.
The technology works for anyone with a broadband Internet connection. Doctors at CAMC give lectures and seminars on topics ranging from diabetes to osteoporosis, and physicians around the state can watch in real time. The programs are archived on a Web site so they can be reviewed at any time.
CAMC has been using a version of the system since 2002. But that was designed only for doctors, and in fact gave them six of the 50 hours of continuing medical education they need each year to retain their licenses.
Now, the medical center is expanding its use of the technology, making information available to anyone in the state with broadband Internet access.
"We can't always get the patient to us,'' said Doug Young, network media specialist at Charleston Area Medical Center. "We we're trying to do is get to them.''
The first educational program in the new effort focuses on diabetes. According to the Department of Health and Human Resources, 9.8 percent of West Virginians have been diagnosed with the illness, the fourth-highest rate in the country.
Diabetes is an expensive illness to treat, but what makes it a good candidate for a program like Mediasite is that patients play a crucial role in managing it, Young said.
"Diabetes is really controlled by the patient, rather than the health-care provider,'' he said. "The more someone knows about how to manage it, the better.''
The communications system could be a boon to West Virginia in other ways. The isolation of doctors and patients from large hospitals like CAMC in the largely rural state has long been a problem for health care providers.
Dr. Robert B. Walker, the clinical director of Marshall University's Robert C. Byrd Center for Rural Health, says programs like the CAMC effort could help draw doctors to the state.
"Every one of these is a strike against isolation,'' he said. "There's less and less reason for people not to do full, satte-of-the-art rural medical practices.''
Young said the Mediasite system was only one aspect of CAMC's move to "telemedicine,'' with physicians using digital technology to diagnose and even help treat illness from a distance.
