Then please watch this passionate TedXDirigo presentation by Dr. Rafael Grossmann Zamora, a Trauma Surgeon at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine.

Highlights:

trauma and time are very close together. The 3 R’s: Right Patient, Right Place, Right Time

Long travel times = high death rates

30% of the population, or 90 million Americans, do not live within 60 minutes of a trauma centre

A video is worth a thousand pictures… but the (teletrauma) system (we have at the Hospital) is very good but cumbersome to use, complex, very expensive, it’s not intuitive, when we get the call we have to go find the nearest camera, turn it on, sit down and go through some steps, and then finally… …so it’s not an ideal system so we’re looking for something better, something more portable, more affordable… …and then Apple introduced Facetime… …a dream come true, mobile, portable, audiovisual, HD live connection between someone and someone else from anywhere to anywhere

For the price of a $229 iPod we were able to spread the reach of our trauma centre program by 130 million sq ft

A 10 year old patient said to her obviously impressed mum: “What’s the big deal mum? this is like skype, I use this all the time!”

Face to Face I was able to look at her mum and tell her her little girl was going to be fine, so as a medical professional the moment, the feeling, was incredible, I would say it was ‘picture perfect’ but I should really say ‘video perfect’

The one variable in healthcare that is very important and hard to quantify is the user satisfaction with improved communication, When that Doctor who needs the expert advice can get to us really quickly not using a phone but using a live connection with high definition that is really priceless….

to me the most incredible thing us that this is so simple, so obvious, so possible, so inexpensive and yet we never thought of doing it before… …and that a gadget made for playing is improving patient care, maybe saving lives and saving thousands of dollars!