Secure Collaboration Technology for Rural Clinical Telemedicine

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Telemedicine Team

Advisory Board

Telemedicine Project Team

• The Concurrent Engineering Research Center is an interdisciplinary research unit of West Virginia University. CERC's primary business is the research, development, and demonstration of computer and communication technologies to enable collaboration in different domains. Over the last eight years, CERC developed software technology for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and has been applying collaboration technology in the medical informatics arena in the last three years under both DARPA and the National Library of Medicine's (NLM's) High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Initiative. CERC developed the ARTEMIS multimedia patient record system.
  
  Its director, Professor Ramana Reddy, is the Principal Investigator of this project and has managed over $50M in sponsored research from both the Federal Government and industry.
  
  Associate Professor V. ("Juggy") Jagannathan, Co-Principal Investigator, is renowned for his work on object-oriented programming, and distributed artificial intelligence and, more recently, for his contribution to starting the CORBAMed special interest group to bring a standards based approach to healthcare information systems.
  
  
• Valley Health Systems, Inc., is a private, non-profit corporation based in Huntington, West Virginia, that operates an integrated network of 15 community health centers and public health programs in southern West Virginia. It serves mainly rural or physician-short areas in seven counties in West Virginia as well as some counties in Ohio and Kentucky.
  
  Three VHS clinics are connected via a frame-relay communications network, and are similarly connected to CERC and St. Mary's Hospital. VHS recently received a grant of $50K from the Bell Atlantic Corporation to improve its computing and counications infrastructure based on the success of the separately-funded ARTEMIS project, for which VHS is a field site. VHS is also a field site for this project.
  
  One of the Co-Principal Investigators of this proposal, Bruce Merkin, M.D., is the former Medical Director of VHS and is now a rural, general, internal medicine specialist.
  
  Another Co-Principal Investigator, Dr. Michael Kilkenny, M.D. is the Medical Director of VHS.
  
  
• Cabell Huntington Hospital is a 300-bed tertiary care medical center with teaching and research affiliation with the Marshall University School of Medicine. Serving 29 counties in the tri-state area of southern West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, CHH provides emergency and trauma services. Its health care providers are participating in the telemedicine application for intensive care providers.
  
  
• St. Mary's Hospital is a not-for-profit, teaching hospital serving southern West Virginia, southeastern Ohio, and Kentucky. Health care providers at St. Mary's are participating in the telemedicine application for intensive care providers.
  
• The Huntington Internal Medicine Group is a group practice of physicians associated with St. Mary's Hospital. An intensivist from this group will work with CERC in the development and testing of the intensivist scenario experiment.
  
  
• The Marshall University School of Medicine, at one of the two major universities in West Virginia, emphasizes primary care and the training of medical students in rural areas of West Virginia. An intensivist from the school will work with CERC in the development and testing of the intensivist scenario application.
  
  
• Alderson-Broaddus College is a four-year college with a nationally recognized program for training mid-level healthcare providers, and has targeted telemedicine as an important new area for emphasis. The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation of Pittsburgh (a major regional charitable foundation) recently awarded Alderson-Broaddus $250K for five projects in the Physician's Assistant program, including telemedicine and distance learning. Alderson-Broadus will provide consultation in the design and testing of telemedicine applications for mid-level providers.
  
  
• West Virginia Primary Care Association, Inc., represents the more than 70 non-profit community health centers in West Virginia. Their mission is to strengthen access to primary care through a network of health services, providing community awareness and identifying areas of unmet need. Home care providers will work with CERC researchers and VHS physicians to define and deploy the home care scenario application.
  
  
• Wayne County Community Service Organization, Inc., operates and finances social and public welfare programs for the benefit of disadvantaged populations of Wayne County. Home care providers will work with CERC researchers and VHS physicians to define and deploy the home care scenario application.
  
  
• Los Alamos National Laboratory is a US Department of Energy laboratory that is actively pursuing telemedicine. The goal of LANL's Telemed project is to develop an open standards-based radiology repository. LANL is assisting CERC in the development, customization and integration of diagnostic support services for the telemedicine application for mid-level providers.
  
  
• Applied Medical Informatics, Inc., is a company specializing in customized expert systems and diagnosis and treatment decision support tools, such as Iliad, which is in use in many medical schools; and Medical HouseCall and Pediatric HouseCall, which provide information about disease symptoms, medical procedures, and drug interactions to healthcare consumers. AMI is the recipient of a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to provide a medical knowledge server based on Iliad's expert system capabilities enabling real-time diagnosis, treatment, and alerts. AMI will donate software that will be integrated into the ARTEMIS system.
  
  
• Protocol Systems, Inc., is a manufacturer of patient monitoring instruments and systems. Protocol's portable Propaq monitors and Acuity central monitoring systems provide cost-effective care for monitoring patients in a continuous manner. Protocol will donate hardware that will be integrated into the ARTEMIS system.

Telemedicine Advisory Board

• Senator John D. Rockefeller, West Virginia (Chair)
• Dr. Thomas Bender, M.D., Executive Director of the International Union for Circumpolar Health, Anchorage, Alaska
• Mr. Denis Bone, President, Bell Atlantic West Virginia
• Dr. Neil Bucklew, Ph.D., former President of West Virginia University; Professor of Management and Chairman of Informatics Taskforce at WVU's College of Business and Economics
• Dr. Michael DeBakey, M.D., Chancellor Emeritus, Baylor College of Medicine and Director, DeBakey Heart Center
• Mr. J. Thomas Jones, Executive Director/CEO, St. Mary's Hospital, Huntington, West Virginia
• Dr. Michael Kilkenny, M.D., Medical Director, Valley Health Systems, Inc.
• Dr. Raman Mitra, M.D., Ph.D., Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois
• Judge Dan O'Hanlon, Judge of the West Virginia Sixth Judicial Circuit
• Mr. A. Michael Perry, President/CEO Bank One, Huntington, West Virginia
• Dr. Niels Rossing, Professor of Medicine, National University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark; former head of the European Health Telematics program
• Dr. Jay Sanders, M.D., Eminent Scholar Chair of Telemedicine, Medical College of Georgia

Mr. Steve Shattls, CEO of Valley Health Systems, Inc., and Dr. Ramana Reddy, Director of CERC and Professor of Computer Science at West Virginia University, will serve as ex-officio members of the panel.

This initial group will be augmented with members of other healthcare professions.

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