How Children’s Hospital LA saves eyesight with telemedicine

By Microsoft in Business Team

July 11, 2017

Tags
Healthcare

Focus on: Empower Employees, Optimize Operations

An ocean apart, Armenia and Los Angeles are two vastly different places, but each is home to families that cherish the health and well-being of their children.

In Armenia, childhood blindness is one of the country’s most pressing health issues, presenting families with massive medical and economic challenges. This all-too-common threat tragically limits the futures of thousands of Armenian children and threatens the prosperity of the country as a whole. With childhood blindness occurring in Armenia at three times the US rate, the medical crisis in Armenia presents a critical opportunity to harness the power of telemedicine to bridge great distances and transform lives.

Seven years ago, Dr. Thomas Lee, Director of The Vision Center, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Associate Professor, USC Roski Eye Institute, embarked on a partnership with the Armenian EyeCare Project to address Armenia’s pediatric health challenges. The partnership’s mission is to train Armenian surgeons to reverse the effects of Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), a degenerative eye disease most commonly seen in premature babies that leads to severe vision loss or complete blindness if left untreated. This aggressive disease is nearly 100% curable in the United States, but without the same training, resources, and medical expertise available in Armenia, ROP continues to contribute to the country’s high rate of infant blindness.

Over the years, Dr. Lee’s vision of the partnership has developed into something new. His ultimate dream is to train Armenian surgeons remotely, using a reliable, cutting-edge digital solution that will allow him to observe the complicated eye procedures and communicate with the Armenian doctors in real time—all from his own hospital 7,000 miles away.

After enlisting the help of SADA Systems, an LA-based IT consulting and services company and long-time Microsoft cloud solutions partner, the project’s digital dream became a reality using Skype for Business and Microsoft OneDrive. Both products offered unparalleled communication and connectivity capabilities while meeting compliance and security standards, in addition to providing amazing collaboration features that opened the door for Dr. Lee to dream even bigger.

As telemedicine expands across the globe, the healthcare industry is exploring new ways to accelerate its growth and facilitate its adoption. Microsoft’s commitment to streamlined communication, flexible collaboration, and reliable service provides hospitals and medical organizations with an innovative partner in this pursuit. Platforms like Skype for Business are catalysts for medical pioneers and inventive leaders like Dr. Lee, pushing the field of telemedicine forward to improve medical conditions and access to healthcare all over the world.

Click here to watch the video and experience Dr. Lee’s transformative journey and the Microsoft and SADA System solutions that are revolutionizing telemedicine.