LifeBot® announced today it has exercised its Option Agreement securing the exclusive worldwide licensing rights to DREAMS™ Digital EMS, the $14 million advanced EMS ambulance and hospital telemedicine system developed by Texas A&M University, Texas Engineering Experiment Station, UTHealth, and the U.S. Department of the Army.

Phoenix, AZ, USA August 17, 2011 : LifeBot, LLC acted today to secure its leading technology position in emergency telemedicine systems. Considered by many to be the most highly developed ambulance to hospital EMS telemedicine system ever deployed, DREAMS™ Digital EMS is the first and only system to provide interactive simultaneous “live” transmissions of critical patient data, audio, and video. The system, in essence, brings hospital specialists to the scene giving to doctors and nurses a virtual tele-presence to collaborate in saving lives and managing disasters in real time, on the “battlefield”, at home or abroad.

Not Just a Concept : Proven in Use for Over Six Years:

The DREAMS™ Digital EMS system is the most highly developed field tested and proven emergency telemedicine system in the world. Developed with over $14 million in funding from the Telemedicine and Technology Research Center (TATRC) an office of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, the Digital Ambulance System has been deployed in actual use for over six years in five prototype ambulances in Liberty County, Texas.

The project was headed by renowned surgeon, James “Red” Duke, Jr. who utilized the system to triage and treat victims in New Orleans “live” during Hurricanes Katrina from the Memorial Hermann emergency room in the Texas Medical Center in Houston. DREAMS family products were also used to support remote clinics during the Katrina and Rita disasters.

Both Dr. Duke, and former Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) Dr. S. Ward Cassells, received the distinguished General Maxwell R. Thurman Award, presented at the American Telemedicine Association, for participation in the design of these advanced telemedicine systems.

“Most attempts at ambulance based telemedicine systems have had extremely limited success, but DREAMS™ has actually delivered on its promise to get the job done and over a number of years.” says LifeBot CEO, R. Lee Heath, who is also best known as the inventor making possible the Automatic External Defibrillator (AED), recommended for the Lemelson MIT Prize by American Heart Association officials and others.

The “Super Ambulance™” System utilizes multiple remote controlled cameras to provide hospital based emergency specialists invaluable live intelligence, emergency preparedness or “situational awareness” so prompt, objective, and safe life-saving assessments and treatments may be made. The hospital knows more precisely “what”s coming in the door” and can accurately prepare the appropriate assets accordingly to both reduce costs and loss of life.

The patient’s physiologic vital signs, data, and medical record reporting (EHR or e-PCR) are updated dynamically between the hospital and the scene. The system is especially valuable for treatment of cardiac, trauma, stroke victims and is important in remote areas where transport times may be prolonged. And, the system may actually act to protect ambulance personal and providers during sensitive difficult situations. It may enhance critical decisions during disasters and mass casualty events. DREAMS™ Digital EMS can make the difference in saving thousands of lives, reducing medical errors and their associated risks further lowering costs.

Not Just for the Ambulance, but Hospitals too:

The DREAMS™ system is not solely for use in ambulances, but also for tele-cardiology, tele-stroke, intensive care (e-ICU tele-ICU) and many additional hospital-to-hospital and physician-to-hospital applications as well. LifeBot mobile telemedicine cart and desktop systems will also utilize the DREAMS™ Digital EMS system as well.

The Most Advanced Telemedicine Tablet Solution:

LifeBot has signed a Joint Marketing Agreement with Hewlett Packard. The DREAMS™ Digital EMS solution has been tested on the 1.5 pound portable Slate Tablet PC as well. This means intensivists, cardiologists, neurologists, trauma and emergency disaster specialists can login and achieve tele-presence from almost any location and at any time to save lives.

Additional Solutions for Telemedicine:

Other major technology projects for LifeBot are included in the licensing signed today. “The DREAMS™ Digital EMS system is really a family of solutions”, according to CEO Heath, “and this makes this technology licensing even more exciting.” This includes a stand-alone system called a Deployable Telemedicine System (DTS). This may be used by hospitals to expand their facilities during disasters or dropped into the battlefield to deliver telemedicine as well.

Included is the Back-Pack Telemedicine System, in which battlefield, mobile or tactical medics can actually wear telemedicine systems to save lives in remote or difficult to access locations. It is ideal for medics using motorcycles, ATVs, bicycles, mountain rescue, and helicopter transport, for example. Ultimately, it may even be used by private and municipal providers to deliver telemedicine into homes and businesses to save lives. “When you combine these with our LifeBot patented technologies”, Heath said, “it sets the stage for a roll-out of multiple critical solutions that will only be available from LifeBot.”

Care Coordination and Telemedicine Hubs:

If the ultimate objective is to lower healthcare costs, provide for efficiencies of care, and elevate the quality of care, then LifeBot can accomplish all of these things too. Important is prioritization of patient”s needs and connecting the right medical expertise or using care coordination. This becomes the central “the name of the game”. To accomplish this LifeBot now has the experience and solutions to build full call centers or telemedicine hubs, at the dispatch, hospital, or battlefield levels.

These centers can use LifeBot triage solutions and telemedicine to intelligently coordinate and safely determine if patient needs are emergent, non-emergent; send ambulances to “real” emergencies and match the needed medical expertise into each particular situation. This is absolutely key to both lowering healthcare provider costs and responding with comprehensive disaster management. This may also fulfill the objectives of the Mobile Healthcare Project of the International Association of Fire Chiefs by providing for “treat and release” and reimbursement for non-emergent calls which may rescue financially distressed Fire and EMS services.

“We will be making more announcements soon as this roll-out of these solutions unfolds.”, said Heath.

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About DREAMS™: The DREAMS™ (Disaster Relief and Emergency Medical Services) digital emergency medical services (Digital EMS) program is led by famed trauma surgeon and educator, Dr. James H. “Red” Duke, Jr. Dr. Duke is professor of surgery, holder of the John B. Holmes Professorship and chief of surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), as well as medical director of Memorial Hermann Life Flight.

The software, hardware, and telecommunications aspects of this program are led by Texas A&M University Researcher Larry Flournoy, and Texas Engineering Experiment Station researcher James Wall, Ph.D. The digital EMS program has developed and deployed wireless video communications and combining AVL/GPS (Automatic Vehicle Location/Global Positioning System) technology and advanced software to enable ambulances and helicopters to reach the victim sooner, begin triage, diagnosis and treatment on the scene, and coordinate helicopters and ambulances to minimize transport time to the nearest appropriate facility, using continuous “live” communication with these facilities.

DREAMS™ Digital EMS has already been successfully deployed and tested aboard “Super Ambulances™” in multiple counties of Texas. In addition, these “Super Ambulances™” also have aided with rescue efforts during the aftermath of the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. DREAMS™ is a tested and proven “battlefield” application.

The development of this system was in conjunction with U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) through its Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC). TATRC performs medical reconnaissance and special operations to address critical gaps that are underrepresented in DoD medical research programs. Versions of DREAMS™ also include field and disaster deployable versions that may be dropped into combat theaters and a HMMWV 9978A2 (Humvee) prototype for in-the-field use by the U.S. Military.

About LifeBot®: LifeBot provides exclusive patented and military developed telemedicine solutions for emergency management of hospital-to-ambulance and hospital-to-home communications. These systems are used to send and receive live video, voice and patient vital-sign data transmissions primarily in support of heart, trauma and stroke victims in ambulances. The company’s patents focus on extension of these life-saving systems into consumer use in the home and business.

The company was founded by R. Lee Heath, who is best known as the inventor businessman making possible the life-saving Automatic External Heart Defibrillator (AED) now in common use throughout the world. Mr. Heath was recommended for the Lemelson MIT Prize by American Heart Association officials and other peers. His experience spans almost four decades in the design and deployment of emergency life-support and their communications systems.

OK, I’ll say it. Health is not skin deep. It’s what’s inside that counts too, sometimes much much more.

Recently a paramedic friend in Texas told me about a day where they took their DREAMS Ambulance to a shopping center to provide open public testing or free health screening as a public service to his community. Most of the people that showed up appeared happy healthy and smiling. But, once he began to hook up subjects to his equipment and look at their vital signs, electrocardiogram, blood pressure, etc., he found many of them had very serious health risks. Most appeared just fine on-the-surface, until then.

“Health is not skin deep. It’s what’s inside that counts too, sometimes much much more.”  Roger Lee Heath

Recently my brother went in for surgery on his knee, an old basketball injury. Pretty simple, right? He appeared quite healthy for years. Well, they hooked him up only to find he was a primary candidate for a heart attack and needed a stint from an interventional cardiologist right away to save his life. Previously, this had gone completely undetected.

Just take a look at the photo above. This appears to be a happy healthy couple, unless you find out one has a myocardial infarction (MI) in progress (STEMI) or another has risky tachyarrhythmias or is simply not well perfused and may have an impending risk of stroke. Potentially, it is not as pretty a picture in a strict healthcare context.

Yet, if you look at the prominent telemedicine equipment suppliers today, you may be shocked to find out most have little or no experience in the healthcare field at all; little knowledge of medical devices and acquiring this critical life-saving inside information. Chances are they were ushered into the healthcare industry because someone wanted video conferencing only. A recent television ad shows a patient in an ambulance talking to a doctor in the Emergency Room on a tablet. But, how will this fair as a comprehensive EMS telemedicine system? Most would say generally not very well and perhaps more risky for the healthcare or emergency professional who could make more informed decisions with more complete information. But, who needs urgent care, and who doesn’t? How can these patients be effectively detected and prioritized?

The Main Issue – Care Coordination:

Very recently, I attended a conference at the Cleveland Clinic on healthcare call center development. After almost 40 years working primarily in the Emergency Medical environment I heard terms such as “Care Coordination” and “Patient Care Coordinator”, terms not so common in this industry. Yet, the Emergency Department is really the true front door to most hospitals with up to 80% of patient admissions often occurring there. If one is to reduce medical errors or risks and more clearly determine what level of care a patient needs, how can one go about accomplishing this in a thorough and safe way?

First – Use Really Good Triage and TeleTriage:

Asking the right questions is important. It can save a life. If you don’t, obviously your risks and chances for medical errors are significantly increased. So how do you ask the right questions? How are they properly clinically referenced, and what are the differential diagnoses? How do you quickly drill down a query to make sure a patient in need doesn’t fall through the cracks. The answer is to use proven Decision Support Software (DSS) to help you do this. It can speed your assessments and assure you are deploying a safety net for those patients in urgent need who otherwise might have gone undetected. It can also save time and eliminate “Over Triaging” by making sure exactly the right questions are asked, not a hand-full of questions that may not directly relate to the exact symptoms before you. When attached to a patient’s medical record, it demonstrates adherence to standards of care and significantly lowers provider risks

Put quite simply, the human brain simply cannot reference millions of words of clinically referenced research, but Decision Support Software can, and it can help you do it within just a few minutes to save a life. It can provide for both accurate and early detection of the risks at hand.

Second – Acquire Physiological Data:

Go beyond video teleconferencing by acquiring vital signs data, ECG, 12-lead, pulse ox, blood pressure, video exam cameras, etc. This gives one the ability to look inside and see what is really happening. This is the only objective way to fully assess the risks. Of course, the modern ambulance may do some part of this already, but almost none fully integrate decision supported triage, video, physiological data, and patient medical record charting into one system.

A proper telemedicine system design should also store this important data together. Most systems don’t. In fact many do not record video, much less important patient physiological data. Of utmost importance is for the telemedicine system to “Tag” patient data for each call, encounter or instance so that one patient’s medical record does not get mixed with another’s. Without this feature, risks for the provider are significantly increased.

If you are in a location where there are no fixed or wireless network connections then this is more important, if an intensivist, EMS professional, neurologist, or cardiologist has to assess a patient’s vitals or early symptoms later. If you operate air or ground ambulances or patient transport operations the system, once in route and connecting to networks, should prioritize this critical data and send the most important life-saving information first to the hospital. Then faster more accurate responses to the problems at hand are assured.

Third – Send the Data “Real-Time”

Ideally critical patient data should be provided Real-Time or “Live”. If you have to send the data to a server somewhere, and critical care professionals have to take the extra time to separately locate that patient’s data, this only prohibits or delays prompt assessments and patient care. The data should be made immediately “Usable”. The difference may be life-saving. In addition, there can be additional costs associated with server services. Patient confidential medical record information may also be more protected when shared with only the select parties or the professionals involved.

Fourth – ePCR EHR (Electronic Health Record) and Data Portability:

In an age where EHR and patient charting has become such an important central focus, a proper telemedicine system design should not only store this critical data, but also allow you to forward the data immediately. An example of this is the sending of a 12-lead ECG to activate a STEMI Alert at a hospital cath lab. The system should allow for full data portability, or the ability to save all this information as one complete report. Then complete information, video and physiologic data, may be attached to the patient’s medical record very efficiently.

It is far better to minimize long-term costs and adopt one system that does it all at the outset.”  Roger Lee Heath

In proper telemedicine design, One System should do it all. The alternative is to try and adapt or cobble together many different video, data and charting components, a real mess. ePCR, EHR, video and data from separate systems can only manufacture a nightmare for Data Portability and delay critical patent care. This also sets the stage for major inefficiencies and running up major costs of deploying telemedicine systems. It is far better to minimize long-term costs and adopt one system that does it all at the outset.

Fifth – Video Conferencing is Important

Video Teleconferencing in healthcare is invaluable, but is just one component in a true comprehensive telemedicine system. That is the opinion, at least, of many who have invested a lifetime in delivery of quality patient care. As put forth by one Medical Director, “A picture is worth a thousand words, but perhaps a video is worth a million words.” A video is the central component in many patient assessments. It is essential in trauma and disaster management to assess method of injury, the patient’s exact state, situational awareness, what disaster and rescue assets are on the scene, and much more. It may even provide for legal protection of medical and rescue personnel, similar to the experience of law enforcement. Video recording may pay for itself over-night in such a situation.

But, Health is not skin deep. It’s what’s going on inside that counts, sometimes much much more.

About:

The above commentary was put together by R. Lee Heath, best known as the inventor making possible the modern Automatic External Defibrillator (AED). His company, LifeBot® is involved in the design and deployment of advanced communications telemedicine hubs and call centers for healthcare coordination.

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LifeBot® pro­vides exclu­sive patented and mil­i­tary devel­oped telemed­i­cine solu­tions for emer­gency man­age­ment of hospital-to-ambulance and hospital-to-home com­mu­ni­ca­tions. These sys­tems are used to send and receive live video, voice and patient vital-sign data trans­mis­sions pri­mar­ily in sup­port of heart, trauma and stroke vic­tims in ambu­lances. The company’s patents focus on exten­sion of these life-saving sys­tems into con­sumer use in the home and business.

The sys­tems are also designed for man­age­ment of major crises, dis­as­ters and emer­gen­cies by hos­pi­tal based and field pub­lic safety emer­gency pro­fes­sion­als and for the U.S. Mil­i­tary in bat­tle­field oper­a­tions. We inte­grate next gen­er­a­tion broad­band capa­bil­i­ties not inher­ent in today’s inter­op­er­a­tive dig­i­tal radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions so the ben­e­fits of achiev­ing telemed­i­cine, tele­health, and emer­gency pre­pared­ness objec­tives may all be fully realized. To learn more about these systems, please contact us.