Volume 5, Number 2     March/April 1997

  Technology Transfer

ACTS Links Rural Patients With City Doctors

URAL RESIDENTS ARE RECEIVING the same high-quality medical care as their big city cousins because of innovations in telemedicine technology from NASA's Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS). Coupling ACTS with the Telemedicine Instrumentation Package (TIP), developed by Krug Life Sciences and NASA's Johnson Space Center to monitor the health of astronauts in space, could save lives.

On Earth, TIP works as a portable diagnostic center, incorporating examination tools and audio-video equipment into a suitcase-sized package. ACTS and TIP together become a life-saving tool, enabling a rural health care professional to send for evaluation a patient's vital information to a hospital hundreds or thousands of miles away.

	The NASA/Krug Life Sciences Telemedicine Instrumentation Package is a portable diagnostic center.

NASA's Lewis Research Center (LeRC) manages ACTS. LeRC professionals presented this trailblazing technology during a staged trauma last summer at St. Vincent Hospital, Billings, Montana. St. Vincent Hospital doctors used TIP and a 23-inch ultra-small aperture terminal to examine patients at an Exxon refinery and at Crow/Northern Cheyenne Hospital to demonstrate the practical applications of satellite technology in remote settings.

"The demonstration was an important step in promoting the role of satellites in the telemedicine field," said Nancy Horton of the ACTS Experiments Office. "Doctors were pleased with the 'diagnosis quality' high-resolution audio, video and data transmission provided by ACTS and TIP. We're confident that this technology will become a viable means for expanding access to state-of-the-art medicine regardless of geographic boundaries."

Krug Life Sciences has seen an interest in the commercial production of TIP, Horton said. TIP is estimated to sell for $30,000 to $50,000 per unit when available commercially, probably in two years or less.

The ability of ACTS to provide on-demand, integrated communications makes it an ideal platform to test technology. Such technology will open doors to new types of telemedicine, such as mammography. Obtaining annual mammography screenings can be difficult for rural patients—especially when the closest hospital is 300 miles away. ACTS would eliminate long waits for results and return trips for additional tests by connecting small town clinics and mobile mammography vehicles to the experts at urban hospitals.

LeRC, Cleveland Clinic and the University of Virginia have initiated the Telemammography Using Satellite Communications Project to develop and demonstrate technologies and methods that will deliver high-quality, high-resolution mammography images using low-cost, high-access global satellite networks. ACTS provides the direct link to mammography experts at large medical facilities for populations that lack high-data-rate terrestrial communications.

For more information, contact Jennifer Sibits at Lewis Research Center.
Call 216/433-8142,Fax 216/433-6371, E-mail: Jennifer.J.Sibits@lerc.nasa.gov
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