Blog Archives

Medweb Provides Disaster Relief Internationally and at Home

6/24/2017

As founder and CEO of Medweb in San Francisco, Peter “Pete” Killcommons guides his company in providing telemedicine and imaging services; his firm is one of the few corporations that include a dedicated philanthropic division. Among the recipients of Peter Killcommons’ charity projects are disaster sites in the United States and abroad.

Southwest Asia has been a focal point for several Medweb initiatives. In Afghanistan, Medweb installed and provided training for a deployable telemedicine clinic. This clinic enables doctors and patients in separate locations to communicate via voice and visual links. Medweb also improved satellite communications at a lab in Jalalabad.

Medweb also served Tristan de Cunha, a remote island west of South Africa that can only be reached by a weeklong boat trip. The company enhanced telemedicine capabilities and continues to provide technical support and training there.

In the US, Medweb aided victims of Hurricane Katrina with a mobile medical triage unit on the ground at Touro Hospital and on board the USNS Comfort.

0 Comments

About American Telemedicine Association Accreditation

6/14/2017

0 Comments

The chief executive officer of Medweb, a medical software and device company, Peter Killcommons, MD, has more than two decades of experience in the industry. The head of the company’s disaster response, radiology, and telemedicine divisions, Dr. Peter “Pete” Killcommons is also a member of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA).

A nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the affordability, equity, and quality of healthcare across the globe, the American Telemedicine Association is based in Washington, DC. With over 10,000 members, the ATA is open to students, individuals, corporations, and other institutions to help make it the leading association for the multi-billion-dollar telemedicine industry. In addition to member benefits, the organization offers benefits to healthcare providers and regulators with its accreditation program.

Accreditation, which must be renewed every three years, is a sign to consumers and regulators that an organization is dedicated to ensuring best practices regarding laws, regulations, and industry standards are followed. Providers then can differentiate themselves from their competitors while increasing consumer trust and recognition, and regulators can know the organization is committed to accuracy and quality in telemedicine. To receive ATA accreditation, an eligible healthcare provider organization must submit an application with all required supporting documents. The organization is then surveyed by ATA members to determine that all telemedicine policies and procedures meet necessary standards in the areas of demonstration, attestation, documentation, and online resources.

0 Comments

Telemedicine Brings Doctors and Patients Together

6/5/2017

0 Comments

Dr. Peter Killcommons is the founder and CEO of Medweb, a California-based company that develops telemedical systems, helping to join doctors with patients who are not in the same location. As both a surgeon and philanthropist, Dr. Peter (Pete) Killcommons has participated for over 20 years in the evolution of telemedicine, which has seen rapid development over that time with the advent of the Internet and other modern communications technologies.

In addition to allowing doctors to apply their skills and expertise to patients beyond easy reach, such as those from rural communities, telemedicine can accelerate the medical examination process for patients in any circumstances. Cameras and other remotely operated devices, in combination with powerful encryption and network-connection tools, can allow doctors to study scanned images and diagnose patients across an electronic connection with the same accuracy as a personal examination. This not only helps to preserve hospital access and resources for emergencies, it allows doctors to be better prepared for a patient’s arrival on such an occasion and begin administering treatment sooner.

U.S. military medics particularly appreciate this aspect of the technology, since it allows them to examine a patient and transmit detailed information on the nature of an injury ahead of evacuation. This is far preferable to the previous method of simply filling out a card and tying it to the patient with a wire.

The possibility of being able to treat patients remotely is significant in other scenarios as well. NASA has long considered the possibility of an astronaut becoming injured or ill, and the agency being unable to abort the mission and return to Earth in time for treatment. At present, NASA is interested in the many applications of ultrasound technology for the crew of the International Space Station. This is because ultrasound can provide detailed tissue scans of patients, and it has been successfully used during the treatment of certain conditions like internal bleeding, potentially preventing death from a traumatic injury.

0 Comments

Medweb Provides Disaster Relief Internationally and at Home

About American Telemedicine Association Accreditation

Telemedicine Brings Doctors and Patients Together

Author

Archives

Categories