Wound care traditionally has been an expensive, time-consuming exercise, often requiring specialized medical transport services, long waits for medical services and, as a direct result of the other problems, lengthy hospital stays. Smartphones are changing that dynamic for the benefit of, well, everyone except hospital bean counters who want beds filled for as long as possible.
A physician group called the Wound Technology Network has equipped clinicians with HTC Fuze smartphones on the AT&T wireless network to treat chronic wound patients in South Florida and Southern California. The clinicians go to patients' homes, connect to WTN's tele-management center in Hollywood, Fla., with a videoconferencing application called iVisit and consult with a wound-care specialist. Healthcare IT News reports that clinicians in the field can send digital images from their phones that go directly into an electronic medical record. (Wouldn't you know, WTN generally must rely on fax technology to send the uploaded images to other physicians.)
To learn more about Wound Technology Network:
- take a look at this Healthcare IT News story