Technology that saves children's lives
April 28, 2008 (Computerworld) Frank Brady expects to celebrate a significant milestone in June: His Medical Missions for Children charity will treat its 30,000th child that month.That's an impressive record for the nine-year-old nonprofit organization, which connects leading U.S. doctors with doctors and their pediatric patients all over the world.
MMC uses telecommunications technology and other IT tools to bridge gaps in knowledge, treatment and geography. The organization has created what it calls the Global Telemedicine & Teaching Network to enable U.S.-based doctors to consult with foreign pediatric physicians through a distance-medicine network called the Telemedicine Outreach Program so they can help diagnose and treat children worldwide. Technology also has allowed MMC to expand its services to include educational content for health care providers and patients in multiple countries.
"MMC fulfills a host of health- related needs throughout the world," says Alberto Salamanca, the Mexico-based president of MMC's Latin America region. "Technology has proven to be the most important tool to carry the mission and vision of MMC."
Computerworld named Medical Missions for Children the winner in the nonprofit organization category in its annual Honors Program recognizing technology innovation.
In some ways, Brady, 65, has spent his whole life readying himself for this mission. After he contracted spinal meningitis as a 1-year-old, the doctors told his parents that their son had only three weeks to live. But a week later, they suggested trying penicillin -- at the time, an experimental drug that hadn't been tested on pediatric patients.
The treatment worked, convincing Brady's mother that the boy was spared so he could do something special with his life.
Brady's path thereafter wasn't unusual. He spent most of his 35-year career working in international business.
But he didn't forget his mother's words.
"After raising a family and retiring [in 1997], those words that my mother said over and over again forced me to look for something special," Brady says, explaining that he and his wife, Peg, wanted to help families facing medical crises similar to his own.
MMC does just that. It allows participating hospitals in developing countries to contact medical specialists from U.S. hospitals to help diagnose and treat severely ill children. The consultation is done through teleconferencing, obviating the time and expense of travel.
Brady says there's a dire need for such services. One out of every three children who comes to MMC has been misdiagnosed, and 85% of the properly diagnosed patients need their treatments adjusted.
MMC's first case linked doctors at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital in Paterson, N.J., where MMC is based, to physicians in Panama treating an 8-year-old boy with a cranial deformity.
Brady used about $100,000 from his retirement savings to buy Polycom Inc. teleconferencing equipment, which included integrated diagnostic equipment in addition to a monitor, a camera and speakers, for the Hospital del Niño in Panama City. He also bought a Polycom setup for doctors at St. Joseph's.
"We showed it could work, and we started putting it in hospitals around the world," Brady says.
The MMC network now connects volunteer doctors from 27 Tier 1 U.S. hospitals with pediatric health care facilities in 108 countries.
In addition, MMC now operates a global satellite and IPTV network called the Medical Broadcasting Channel, as well as the Global Video Library of Medicine and the Giggles Children's Theater, which brings entertainment to pediatric patients in the U.S.
"It's a great humanitarian use of telemedicine," says Craig Stephens, an associate professor of biology at Santa Clara University in California and chairman of the judging panel for the health category of The Tech Museum Awards program, which is administered by The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. MMC was a 2006 Tech Museum Awards laureate.
As it grows, MMC's IT needs remain very similar to what they were in its early days, says John Riehl, MMC's president and chief operating officer.
However, compared with earlier tools, today's teleconferencing equipment supports much richer interactions among doctors and offers more-advanced diagnostic capabilities. For example, cameras can provide magnified views of the skin, and scopes can look into patients' eyes and noses.
MMC has also started employing high-definition videoconferencing equipment, which can be used to view digital images, Riehl says. This gives doctors real-time access to MRIs, CT scans and X-rays, without loss of image quality.
"They can look at the same image at both locations with quality that allows them to draw diagnostic conclusions," Riehl says.
Improvements in equipment haven't addressed all of MMC's challenges, however. Brady says there are times when MMC must send its own staffers to foreign hospitals to set up equipment because of a lack of on-site expertise. The World Bank, which provides equipment for hospitals around the world, also helps install MMC's equipment. Polycom has also provided support to hospitals, Brady says.
Cost and access to bandwidth can also be challenges.
For example, in late 2005, MMC started working with Armenia's National Institute of Child and Adolescent Health. When MMC was negotiating for high-speed Internet service with Armenia's sole service provider, the ISP initially asked for $7,500 a month before agreeing to $500.
Despite the cost, the return is significant. Dr. Konstantin Ter-Voskanyan, a pediatric cardiologist and president of the Armenian Association of Pediatric Professionals, says MMC collaborated with local doctors on seven cases in 2007, and the collaboration saved several lives by allowing doctors to make the proper diagnosis and set up the right treatment.