The Future of Telemedicine in O&G

Abstract

This paper presents an ongoing work in on the future of telemedicine in O&G. There has been a huge development in the use of video consultation between remote patients and the doctors. We believe the future of telemedicine in O&G will add to this workflow by investigating how we can transfer visual medical data between "offshore nurses" and "medical experts" at hospitals onshore in order to improve diagnostics and treatment. We will describe a decision support system that supports an optimal workflow and collaboration, between medics onshore and offshore. The goal is to make better and faster medical decisions, and improve the quality of healthcare offshore. The oil companies have much of the same structure and same challenges in remote medical treatment. We investigate an optimal workflow including how technology supports a new telemedicine work process by transmitting very high quality information (e.g. ultrasound images) to the cardiovascular medical experts. We will review our work on developing a prototype "on the go" solution between medics offshore and the medical experts onshore at the hospital. The concept will be based on a Pad/PC solution capturing the ultrasound image transmission between the user and experts, a systematic work process and a knowledge base integrated in the Pad/PC "on the go solution". With optimal workflow it should not take more than 5-7 minutes from the starting point to have a decision from the medical expert. This will improve diagnostics, medical safety and health quality on offshore installations.

Quality indicators of telemedical care offshore—a scoping review

“…The 15 publications included eight journal articles [3,4,[17][18][19][20][21][22], five conference reports [6,[23][24][25][26], one doctoral thesis [27], and one chapter of a book [28]. Table 2 shows a summary of the publications.…”

“…The types of publication were heterogenous, varying from prospective studies [18,20,22,27], qualitative analyses [6,21], a literature review [3], and a theoretical underpinning [17] to retrospective experience reports, partly with no scientific data base [4,19,[23][24][25][26]28]. Seven articles addressed quality of telemedical care offshore [6,[20][21][22][23][24]26], five articles covered areas relevant for the topic scientifically [17-19, 25, 27], and three articles discussed the topic without any data base [3,4,28]. Seven of the fifteen publications were identified through grey literature research and reference cross check instead of medical database inquiry [19,21,[23][24][25][26]28].…”

“…Seven articles addressed quality of telemedical care offshore [6,[20][21][22][23][24]26], five articles covered areas relevant for the topic scientifically [17-19, 25, 27], and three articles discussed the topic without any data base [3,4,28]. Seven of the fifteen publications were identified through grey literature research and reference cross check instead of medical database inquiry [19,21,[23][24][25][26]28].…”

Telemedicine Services for the Arctic: A Systematic Review

“…One of the challenges within maritime telemedicine is the lack of complete shared health records. In this regard, Thorvik et al [ 12 ] developed and tested a telemedicine prototype known as a virtual examination room, which is an example of software for sharing medical data, enabling collaboration in different situations and based on optimal workflows between the offshore and onshore medical facilities. The concept of the virtual examination room is to give freedom and interconnectedness among the medical experts, the hospital, and the offshore nurse to simultaneously see, interpret and discuss the medical information available in the virtual examination room that has been retrieved from the connected medical devices.…”

“…Despite the increasing number of fishermen and other seafarers, maritime working conditions are characterized by an absence of access to health care facilities [ 6 , 7 ]. There are factors that affect successful implementation of maritime or offshore telemedicine in the Arctic, including long distance, extreme weather conditions, absence of good communication coverage, and the time required for search and rescue (SAR) helicopters to reach the Artic, which reduce the possibility of medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) [ 6 , 10 - 12 ]. According to AH Gundersen, Senior adviser at The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre of Northern Norway (JRCC NN) in Bodø, time is considered to be the scarcest resource in an emergency situation, particularly in the Arctic, because of the long distance and harsh environmental conditions [ 13 ].…”