HOLLYWOOD, FL – The Wound Technology Network, a Hollywood, Fla.-based physician group, has adopted a new mobile technology designed to improve care to patients in southern Florida.

Physicians of the WTN are holding teleconferences with patients and wound specialists through HTC FUZE, a smart phone developed by AT&T, and a software application called iVisit. The goal, said Chief Operating Officer George Pollack, is to provide more informed diagnoses and treat wounds faster for patients in their homes.

“The whole concept was to move advanced care centers to a patient’s home,” said Pollack. “It’s all about wireless mobility.”

Pollack said the teleconference capabilities the WTN has today are the result of an evolutionary process beginning with a basic Web connection that developed through the adoption of new wireless technology in 2002. From there, he said, the WTN used laptops and finally moved to mobile devices to provide fast conferencing capabilities at the patient’s home.

“We wanted to have a better methodology by using telehealth to administer care,” said Jeffrey Galitz, MD, of the Wound Technology Network. “Before we were using laptops. It was cumbersome with a computer but functional, and we knew it could be better.”

The WTN provides care to residents of southern Florida by setting up live video streaming with a video conferencing solution called iVisit, developed by Santa Monica, Calif.-based iVisit LLC. The teleconference is set up between the patient, physician and wound specialists at the WTN’s teleconferencing center to assist in diagnoses.

“Using this has dramatically improved care,” said Pollack. “We can set up two-way live conversation and live video streaming and send hi-res pictures instantly back to our telehealth center. If a patient were to call me, without looking at the patient, I wouldn’t know what to do,” said Galitz. “With this technology, we can avoid a lot of unnecessary patient visits to hospitals. In a lot of different areas it has a lot of benefits.”

Galitz said the level of patient satisfaction has increased since the phone was introduced. Setups at patient homes are much faster and the likelihood of a computer crash is non-existent, he said.

“There is no comparison between the use of phones and the laptop,” said Galitz. “I have a store room full of broken laptops. We are connected to 4 billion patients through the use of cell phones. We are linked. ”

“The developments of the Wound Technology Network is a sign where healthcare is going,” said J. Peter Waegemann, vice president of the mHealth Initiative, Inc. “The future of healthcare is in new communication patterns between patients and providers. Mobile phones and the capabilities of transmitting images are enabling mHealth, a new vision of modern healthcare. In a few years, such systems will be quite common and both patients and providers will benefit from it.  From wound care, new communication-based care will spread to emergency departments and general practices.”