I2 and Medicine, through Cambodia

Last night, I was tooling around the internet looking for I2 performances to watch. I found a website called the "Research Channel" (www.researchchannel.org) that has several I2-produced films. I had trouble getting them to load, and then, without realizing that it wasn't an I2 production, clicked on a USC-produced film about Operation Smile in Cambodia:

http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=6872&fID=719

I'm very interested in the Third World and would like to do more traveling there, and so I became immediately engrossed in this film, which details visits of western doctors to Cambodia for the purpose of repairing cleft lips and palettes of children. One of the issues faced by the western and Cambodian doctors is the training of Cambodian doctors in new surgical methods and equiptment. It is expensive for the western doctors to come over, and a desired byproduct of this collaboration is the training of Cambodia doctors, over time, in the procedure. As one of the western doctors points out, the best situation would be if the western doctors could come every two months or so, and stay for two weeks, to help teach and monitor the Cambodian medical staff. In this way, the education of the Cambodian doctors happens on a sort of regular schedule, progress can be easily monitored, and the Cambodian doctors and public can be better served by the continuing education of their medical professionals.

Unfortunately, this sort of effort requires a great deal of time and money. Western doctors have practices, jobs, and families in their home countries. And while at least two of the Cambodian medical professionals have been able to come to the statest to advance their training, countless other Cambodian doctors have not, nor have they been able to benefit, at least indirectly, from the advances of their colleagues.

Of course, the whole time I was watching this, I kept waiting for them to talk about I2, since I thought I had clicked on an I2 production. After about 30 minutes, I sort of figured out that I hadn't, and by that time I had also thought about how I2 would be an amazing tool in this situation. Using I2 bandwidth, western doctors could oversee Cambodian doctors while they worked. I2 conferences and workshops could introduce Cambodian doctors to new techniques, materials, and equiptment.

So, I went looking for I2 and medicine. Here are some things I found:

http://www.oit.umd.edu/ITforUM/2002/Spring/internet2/

From the article:

"Internet2 also potentially revolutionizes the field of medicine. In the future, getting a second opinion could be an instantaneous event. Internet2’s videoconferencing and high bandwidth capabilities make the live broadcast of a doctor-patient consultation session to another remote specialist possible, thereby enabling multiple medical opinions and dialogues for a medical case in real-time.

And yet another application, as broadband connections become more commonplace and affordable, remote monitoring of patients may become the order of the day in telemedicine. Furthermore, special and rare medical procedures could potentially be broadcast in real-time to students in the medical profession, thereby making their education richer and paving the way for "virtually experienced" young medical professionals. Virtual surgery is another medical application also under test on Internet2."

And:

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=100685

From this article:

"Through Internet2, researchers also can share three-dimensional images of the human body.

Medical students can work on digital corpses much in the same way they now dissect actual bodies. It may be possible to make an incision into a digital corpse that would react in the same way as a real body."

and also, from the same article:

"Patients are sometimes forced to carry their oversize mammograms from specialist to specialist. In many cases, efforts to move large datasets from medical clinical trials over the Internet have failed miserably.

But with Internet2, the possibility of getting images and data to the right physicians at the right time finally exists, Senger said. "Even a hand-held computer could provide a window to archived data of the human anatomy."

The implications of I2 to the world medical community are enormous. And, I highly recommend the Cambodia video. It's about 50 minutes long, fascinating, and beautifully shot.