Today, Arizona remains a hotbed of
telemedicine activity. Along with the ATP,
the Republic article mentions the Mayo
Clinic telestroke program, where neurologists
connect to emergency room doctors in rural
Arizona to evaluate patients with stroke
symptoms, and the Banner Health eICU
program, which links its multiple intensive
care units to tele-intensivists at a single
site in Mesa. Both programs are featured in
the ATP’s Arizona Telemedicine Magazine,
along with many other telemedicine success
stories, including an Indian Health Service
teleophthalmology program that screens
for diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause
of blindness in working-age adults; “Care
Beyond Walls and Wires,” a Northern Arizona
Healthcare initiative that monitors congestive
heart failure patients and helps them avoid
hospital readmissions; teleconsultations by
the Arizona Burn Center to determine whether
a patient needs to be transported or can be
treated locally; the ATP’s ¡Vida! breast cancer
support group and patient/provider teleeducation program; and HIV/AIDs patient
treatment throughout northern Arizona via
the North Country Healthcare telemedicine
program. Telemedicine programs in Arizona
are growing by leaps and bounds, with many
more successes and startups too numerous to
list here.
Multiple medical specialty services such
as those mentioned above are available
to Arizona’s rural hospitals and other
organizations via telemedicine technology.
The ATP’s national Telemedicine & Telehealth
Service Provider Directory lists 23 telemedicine
service provider companies (22 of them based
in Arizona) currently offering services such as
telecardiology, teledermatology, telestroke,
and telepsychiatry to hospitals, clinics, schools,
and other organizations in Arizona—and
more companies that plan to bring services to
Arizona in the near future.
Telemedicine activities beyond medical
services
Arizona is home to global leaders as well as
startups in telemedicine technology, including
GlobalMed, which made the Deloitte Top 100
fastest growing tech companies list in 2012,
and T-MedRobotics, which makes a remotecontrolled echography system for areas
without local sonography experts.
Telemedicine saves
lives, reduces costs and
improves patient outcomes
and satisfaction. Clearly,
it’s gone main-stage in
Arizona.
Our state is a national telemedicine expertise
leader as well. ATP staff and other Arizona
telemedicine leaders have published a wealth
of books, chapters, and papers over the past
20 years, and have presented at hundreds
of state and national meetings. The ATP
boasts a President Emeritus (Dr. Weinstein),
for being a “pioneer in telemedicine,” and
two past presidents (Elizabeth A. Krupinski,
PhD, and Dr. Weinstein) of the American
Telemedicine Association (ATA), along with
several past and current chairs of ATA Special
Interest Groups. The ATP has been offering
its Arizona Telemedicine Training Program—
with two tracks, each offered three times per
year—for 17 years. The training programs,
offered simultaneously in in ATP training
facilities in Phoenix and Tucson, are linked by
video conferencing, and are among the few
telemedicine education courses accredited
by the American Telemedicine Association.
Dr. Weinstein notes that “many current, and
future, telemedicine leader