Telepathology is:
If you used your multiple guess choice skills, you picked d). The doctor that invented the technique back in 1986, Ronald Weinstein, just passed away at age 86. He also coined the term, “telepathology” where specialties can use telecommunication technologies to diagnose and render medical opinions remotely.
If you’d asked me when I thought this type of medicine was invented, I would have said “late 1990s, early 2000s”. But he didn’t wait for the internet to be ‘on-line’. He forged ahead with what he had on hand. Dr. Weinstein also headed up the Arizona Telemedicine Program that linked more than 60 sites in 70 communities to bring medical services to underserved communities.
As we re-entered the no lockdown lockdown with a return to remote schooling and work-from-home, the obituary in the Sunday New York Times for Dr. Weinstein got me thinking about what we might also take away from remote services.
About a year before she died (in 2018, very pre-Covid), my mother had been given a tablet with a modem (yup, a modem…why? because it works), a blood pressure cuff and a pulse oximeter. Each day, my mother strapped on the cuff, put the oximeter on her index finger, and dutifully entered the data produced in a form on the tablet and hit ‘send’. A nurse remotely monitored the results and would call my mother if there was anything amiss. If she was feeling a little wonky, she could call the nurse who might adjust her medications or suggest some course of action not resulting in a doctor’s visit. This undoubtably saved a lot of time and money while making my mother’s health a daily priority.
If there’s a cohort of underserved Ontarians, it would have to be people in long-term care homes. The management of many homes are outsourced to the private, for profit sector. Personal Support Workers who have to work two, three and sometimes four jobs to make up the hours of one full-time job were early vectors for Covid, unknowingly spreading it like angels of death from home-to-home.
But it’s not just long term care residents. It seems to me that every Ontarian over the age of 65, or younger if they have health challenges, should have the option of home monitoring. Especially now where many Covid infections are spread in the hospitals themselves by patients in for unrelated-to-Covid health care. Sure, this would cost a ton of money. But what does it cost to have seniors running to the ER late at night or on weekends when their primary care physician isn’t available? What does it cost for them to take up an unnecessary ER bed and all the resources brought to bear? If the data shows that the person is running a mild fever, that can be monitored and action taken if things take a turn for the worse. Mail everyone over the age of 65 a Covid rapid test and have that input into the tablet. There’s so much that can be done to keep this ever growing cohort of medical patients in their homes and safe now and beyond the pandemic.
But this is all pragmatic, forward thinking hyperbole. I suppose in this climate, there’s no room for any innovation, as we’re too busy putting out health-related fires instead of looking at best practices around the world or those found right here at home and using that experience to inform our own health care system.
A hearty thank you and well done to the late Dr. Weinstein. May we all learn from your pioneering example.
I’ll leave you with a view of our neighbour’s pond, as if there was any doubt winter is truly upon us.
