practice of medicine is a lot different

here than it is in the lower 48 we have

a population of about 8,000 people

spread out in an area about the size of

the state of Indiana traveling patients

is a challenge many of the villages may

be several hundred miles from a

healthcare facility where travel is only

by either snow machine or dog sled or by

aircraft nothing is easy here as far as

providing medical care in the village

here it’s hard to fathom what it means

to get on a snow machine and ride 90

miles to get in and see patients if the

health aide was faced with a situation

that he or she didn’t understand that

patient was put on a plane and flown

into the regional healthcare facility

and it’s a very expensive proposition

the vision of the original Afghan model

was to create a statewide telehealth

system that would serve all federal

beneficiaries in Alaska we focus on your

disease we focus on cardiology trauma

wound management dermatology

telemedicine has been a lot for us here

we’ve always looked for a solution that

worked in a challenging technology

landscape where we have a mix of

satellite connectivity high bandwidth

low bandwidth late hi Layton sees as

well as terrestrial infrastructure our

application has historically been as a

storeroom forward application very

asynchronous and that’s a huge benefit

that video is bringing to the table is

to have that real-time communication

between the two parties we have about

one and a half thousand people that do

telehealth providers every year the do

telehealth on average there are 500 new

providers each year using or so

so that’s that’s a challenge because

those providers are not here in

Anchorage they’re out of the remote

regions so the system has to be simple

and easy to use with virtually no

training opportunities it must work and

it must provide the highest quality data

audio video that we can obtain it’s not

like communicating over a telephone or a

fax machine or writing a letter it’s

real it’s personal and in its immediate

the one thing that really drew us to

video is the fact that it simply works

it works consistently the video is

without power and just as importantly

the desktop sharing is beyond belief we

had a think 11 people connected on iPads

iPhones max pcs people coming in over

satellite we’d five people sharing your

desktop and we try to make it fail and

we couldn’t we live here on the

northwest coast of Alaska 33 miles above

the Arctic Circle so what man we can

deliver the health care just like they

do in downtown Boston Massachusetts our

providers are demanding solutions that

are based on live video for me to put

everybody in the same screen it’s

priceless we’ve proven that we’ve saved

in literally millions of dollars and

especially travel costs it provides

better care it saves money it prevents

the patient the inconvenience of

traveling to Kotzebue and I think is

important aspect of medical care that we

really want to be able to deliver and

deliver well