Networked medicine, Sprint helps hospitals redefine health care >BY DENISE PAPPALARDO, East Coast Bureau Chief

Saint Luke's-Shawnee Mission Health System has signed a $15 million agreement with Sprint that will let the Kansas City-based hospital change the way it treats, evaluates and cares for its patients.

The hospital system is working with Sprint Healthcare Systems Inc., a business unit of the interexchange carrier, to develop an information network that will link doctors, nurses and patients. Sprint will connect eight hospitals that cover a 150-mile radius in the Kansas City area.

Sprint will use a variety of technologies, including ISDN, dedicated T-1 lines, frame relay and asynchronous transfer mode, to connect the sites, said Chuck Bowen, vice president and general manager of Sprint Healthcare Systems Inc.

The initial network will give hospital employees easy access to patient information throughout the hospital system, which in turn is expected to let the hospital serve patients more quickly and efficiently. Saint Luke's will also send full-motion compressed digital video between sites for consultations and patient diagnosis, Bowen said.

The agreement includes everything from long-distance service to help with wiring the locations together to choosing telemedicine diagnostic tools, said John Wade, chief information officer at Saint Luke's-Shawnee Mission Health System. When Sprint begins offering local service in Missouri and Kansas, that will also be added to the package.

"Eventually, our affiliation with Sprint will bring wellness right into the home," Wade said.

Though the agreement is set at $15 million over the next five years, Saint Luke's believes it will actually amount to 50% more when all is said and done.

"We talked with other service providers like AT&T, Ameritech and SBC Communications, but Sprint offered us the flexibility we were looking for," Wade said. "We have two people looking at telemedicine and Sprint has 200. [Sprint's] investigative work will help us become more cost-effective."

The second phase of the telemedicine service rollout will include home health care workers armed with special fetal monitors, stethoscopes and other diagnostic tools that will send images to a physician miles away. Saint Luke's and Sprint are working together to determine which equipment home health care workers will use, Bowen said. Sprint needs the input from the hospital to choose the best diagnostic tools to suit the medical field's needs, he said.

Ultimately, Saint Luke's would like to make patient information available to the home using a PC or television. To do this, the team is developing future applications, including extensive use of the Internet. The idea is to let people schedule appointments, get referrals and obtain wellness information easily, with the hope of avoiding illness, Bowen said.

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