NewCom Tele-Medicine Project Connects Haiti Hospital with Top U.S. Doctors
February 14, 2011
After a year of scrambling to provide adequate care to victims of last year’s devastating earthquake, staff at Haiti’s Sacre Coeur hospital now have the ability to consult face-to-face with top medical experts in the United States and around the world– thanks to the tele-medicine and Internet service recently donated and implemented by Miami-based NewCom International.
Working in conjunction with iDirect– which donated all of the equipment for project – NewCom International, a global satellite communications firm committed to fostering education, advancing health care and promoting economic development through 21st century communications, provided the VideoMeetings™ application, internet access, engineering design and ongoing technical support necessary to launch the service.
Until now, the medical staff at Sacre Coeur – a hospital located about seventy miles from Port-au-Prince – could only consult with doctors via telephone to seek proper diagnosis and treatment for the rare infectious diseases and other dire health challenges patients in Haiti face, and didn’t have a way to quickly transmit critical medical documents for review.
As a result, it was almost impossible for the partnering medical experts at the Mayo Clinic, John Hopkins and other top medical institutions to adequately assist the Sacre Coeur staff. Thanks to the Internet Access and VideoMeetings™ service NewCom donated, the staff at Sacre Coeur are now able to consult face-to-face with numerous medical experts at the same time, regardless of where they are located in the world, and send large patient records and scans securely and in real time over the Internet.
Tim Traynor, the building and grounds coordinator for Sacre Coeur who has been overseeing the VideoMeetings/Internet project for the hospital, calls the service “revolutionary” and says the project, which underwent numerous setbacks due to logistical issues getting equipment into the country, a hurricane, civil unrest and a cholera outbreak, wouldn’t have happened without NewCom’s commitment and devotion.
“It’s been a long, arduous process and without NewCom’s continued support and refusal to get discouraged along the way, this project wouldn’t have happened,” says Traynor. “In a place like Haiti, we are always trying to overcome just the challenges of day-to-day life and a lot of people get discouraged by this. It’s nice to have that spark of excitement ? that ving, vang, voom at the beginning of a project. But it takes something altogether different to grind it out when there is no spark – and that’s what NewCom did. Every time I called, they gave me the assistance I needed and were there every step of the way. They have been remarkable. I can’t imagine how they service people who are actually paying them.
“It is not exaggerating to say this will save lives,” Traynor continues. “I would suspect that it has already done so even in the short period of time it has been up. I know consultations are already going on and as soon as the system went on board, we sent cardio graphic information on seven pediatric pulmonary cases – which required two gigs of data – to doctors in the United States. Sacre Coeur is a teaching hospital and I can also envision weekly training meetings with a large group of nurses here. Even for a small hospital in the United States to have exposure to this kind of technology would be awesome. To have this available in Haiti is unheard of.”
Jaime Munera, Director of IT and Product Development for NewCom who has been spearheading the initiative, says his company is honored to be involved.
“Using 21st century communications to improve the world and make life better for people is at the core of our company philosophy,” notes Munera. “We are inspired by the incredible commitment of the staff at Sacre Coeur, and feel privileged to play a small part in helping them save lives.”
