Satellite technology beams expertise to remote Alaska clinic
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The only clinic in one of the nation’s busiest commercial fishing ports is so remote that even conventional telemedicine for emergencies has been impossible for its limited staff — until this week.
Starting Thursday, a new partnership with an Anchorage hospital will virtually beam critical care doctors 800 miles (1,287 kilometres) away to the emergency room on the island that holds Dutch Harbor, the operations base for the Bering Sea crabbing fleet made famous by the Discovery Channel show “Deadliest Catch.”
But instead of transmissions with fiber-optics, which are nowhere near the isolated Unalaska Island, the team putting together the system is relying on satellite technology in what is believed to be a first in the country for telemedicine.
The clinic, Iliuliuk Family and Health Services, brings to nine the number of providers served by the electronic intensive care unit at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage.