Children's National Medical Center Obtains Positive Results Using ViTel Net's MedVizer Tele-Echocardiography Solution.

Business Editors/Health & Medical Writers

MCLEAN, Va.--(BW HealthWire)--June 4, 2001

ViTel Net(TM), Inc. , a leading telemedicine product development company, is pleased to announce exciting strides that are being made in pediatric tele-cardiography through their partnership with Children's National Medical Center (CNMC) in Washington, DC.

Excellent results obtained from more than 600 neonatal sessions using ViTel Net's MedVizer(TM) Tele-Echocardiography product, establishes ViTel Net's technology as a solution for improved cardiac care for sick children. According to Dr. Craig Sable: "With the MedVizer Tele-echocardiography product, we have a tool that lets us "be" there to help. The value of this system is exceeding our expectations for improved care of the children we serve."

The pediatric version of ViTel Net's MedVizer Tele-Echocardiography system was designed in collaboration with pediatric cardiologists practicing at CNMC and has demonstrated its effectiveness for pediatric applications over the past 3 years.

More than 600 telemedicine transmissions have been performed in the first three years of the program (currently 10 - 12 telemedicine transmission each week). Subsequent review of the videotape copy confirmed the telemedicine diagnosis in all cases.

Dr. Sable presented the results of his telemedicine study in a Poster Session at the American Telemedicine Association's 2001 Annual Conference. Of the cases sited above, critical heart disease was diagnosed in 12 patients and non-critical heart disease in over 200 patients. A change in patient management or outpatient follow-up resulted in over half of the transmissions.

Nineteen patients were transported to CNMC for potentially life-saving surgery. Transport was cancelled in 15 critically ill patients with non-cardiac diagnoses that could be managed at the referring hospital. Immediate access to telemedicine allowed heart disease to be ruled out in these patients, eliminating the need for expensive transport and reducing family stress.

In addition, cost savings that were realized included an average of 4.2 person-hours per week and an overall annual revenue increase of in excess of one million dollars.

The system is intended to meet the clinical practice requirements and streamline the workflow of busy cardiac specialists. Key features of the MedVizer Tele-Echocardiography solution include capabilities for transferring and displaying diagnostic-quality echocardiographs that enable cardiologists to remotely diagnose or exclude heart disease in infants, children, and adults, especially those who would not otherwise have immediate access to cardiac specialty care.

The MedVizer Tele-Echocardiography product also gives consulting cardiologists the ability to digitize the incoming video stream into high quality MPEG files that can be one heartbeat or several minutes long. This revolutionary development is unique to MedVizer(TM) and allows the pediatric cardiologist the have a permanent record that includes a digital copy of the echocardiogram on file instantly. Dr. Sable states, "The image quality is equal or superior to videotape, yet the files are small enough to allow storage of several hundred studies on currently available computers."

ViTel Net, the acronym for Visual Telecommunications Network, Inc., has consistently been a leading telemedicine/telehealth and e-health development and integration service company for more than a decade, with a broad product line for enterprise-wide use. State-of-the-art multimedia information management integration is the cornerstone of all of its telemedicine/telehealth solutions.