Oregon hospital uses telemedicine to save a baby's life

Doctors at Oregon Health & Science University recently used telemedicine to save a 7-month-old baby's life, according to an article in the Portland Business Journal. Struggling with a 102.4 degree fever and visiting the second hospital of the day, a doctor on duty at Columbia Memorial Hospital called for a telemedicine consultation with OHSU, according to the article. Jennifer Needle, M.D., a pediatric intensivist at OHSU, examined the child via a two-way communication system, with a "robot-like device" at the patient's end and a doctor sitting at a telemedicine computer workstation at OHSU's Doernbecher Children's Hospital. The child's symptoms included a high fever and rash--both of which the remote doctor could see. The child ultimately was diagnosed the child with memingococcemia, a life-threatening bacterial infection.

Telemedicine is "the greatest thing ever invented," Ashley Graber, the child's mother, said, according to the article. "I don't think she'd be alive if not for that." Article