One advantage of hybrid store and forward telemedicine is that each and every medical collaboration becomes a teaching case. And store-and-forward, recorded video clips can be very exciting! This report of using Google Glass to allow students to see a surgeons view even from miles away is intriguing and wonderful. While only 1000 devices have been released for "Google Explorers", the concept fits one of our design philosophies: 'Use what is available.' This event was reported 16 September 2013, and not in the medical literature, but rather in the audio visual literature.
A student was quoted:
“To have the opportunity to be a medical student and share in this technology is really exciting,” said Ryan Blackwell, a second-year medical student who watched the surgery remotely. “This could have huge implications, not only from the medical education perspective, but because a doctor can use this technology remotely, it could spread patient care all over the world in places that we don’t have it already.”
We imagine that a student of Vesalius, Morgani or Fallopio, on 16 January 1594 would have been similarly excited. Consider he's standing in the Fabrici d'Aquapendente, standing, because it is to crowded to sit, with 200 people crowded over a dissecting table, he shares the fascination with future colleagues. We imagine William Harvey standing in the third and fourth row, first conceiving of the idea of circulation. We, ourselves, as newlyweds and medical students just finished with anatomy, had the privilege of visiting and stood in that same amphitheater and wondered...to this day.
The disseccting table was unique. It flipped the body at a moments notice, dropping it into a boat floating below in a secret canal. With the table turned an animal showed up on the other side. Dissection was implicitly, if not explicity, illegal. We wonder, also if, Dr. Christopher Kaeding, should have had something similar for HIPAA, HITECH and the Omnibus 2013 Reconciliaiton Law!
Try doing medical education (and collaboration!) for free on the iPad...
References:
Anatomic theater image: http://www.chimica.unipd.it/ispe12/Teatro%20Anatomico.jpg
http://www.c2meworld.com/consumption/ohio-state-doctor-shows-promise-of-google-glass-in-live-surgery/
http://www.unipd.it/esterni/visiteweb/english/pagine/teatro.htm