'Telepresence' takes mobile surgery up a gear

By ADAM GIFFORD

The world's surgical greats will soon be able to help with operations in small-town New Zealand hospitals via highspeed data links being set up by Broadcast Communications (BCL) and Mobile Surgical Services.

The Government pays MSS $5 million a year to provide day-surgery facilities to small rural hospitals through its $5.5 million mobile operating theatre.

The bus, which has been on the road since last November, is now performing 80 operations a month, and company director Dr Stuart Gowland said the service was now ready for the next phase, the "telepresence".

The operating theatre has been wired up for cameras and sound so a specialist hundreds or thousands of kilometres away can observe an operation and provide advice or talk a surgeon through a new or unfamiliar procedure.

Gowland said that given the $600,000 fitout cost for cameras and transmission equipment, it was impractical to put videoconference facilities in small hospitals such as Masterton, Oamaru or Kaitaia.

BCL has imported six transmission dishes which will be installed at selected regional hospitals.

Gowland expects the system to be running by October.

BCL also designed and built six portable units which can be couriered to the specialists assisting operations from a distance.

"The specialist or assisting surgeon will be able to choose between the cameras, pan around or zoom in to see what they need to."

Gowland said MSS chose to work with BCL because the copper-based ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) "broadband" services that Telecom offered did not provide enough bandwidth.

As well as allowing provincial hospitals to undertake more complex or unusual surgical procedures, tele-medicine should make medical staff feel less isolated.

"It's like flying with an instructor."

This would reduce the disincentive to work in a small town, and ease recruitment problems.

Gowland said the bus project showed there was a viable alternative for rural hospitals.

"We will never be a country with much money but we must innovate our way round that."

Mobile Surgical Services

BCL