AgeLab’s
Joseph Coughlin
delivers
plenary address at American Telemedicine
Association Annual Meeting
July
2003
Joseph
F. Coughlin, Director of the MIT AgeLab,
took center stage last week at the
Orlando, Florida Convention Center
Auditorium giving the American
Telemedicine Association’s
(ATA) first Kenneth Bird Annual Lecture.
The
Bird Lecture, established this year
by the ATA Board of Directors, was
named for one of the first pioneers
of telemedicine. In 1967, Dr. Kenneth
Bird created a two-way audiovisual
microwave circuit that enabled physicians
at the Massachusetts General Hospital
in Boston, MA to provide medical care
to patients 2.7 miles away at the
Logan International Airport Medical
Station. Scientific papers were published
documenting the results of over 1000
patients that used the system.
Joseph
Coughlin shared the podium with John
Glaser, PhD, Chief Information Officer
of Partners Healthcare Systems and
Joseph C Kvedar, MD, Director of Telemedicine,
Partners
Healthcare Systems at Massachusetts
General Hospital.
Dr.
Coughlin’s lecture – The
Creative Destruction of Telemedicine
– traced the development and
trajectory of telemedicine and how
the demands of an aging population
and an active healthcare consumer
movement will transform telemedicine
from a specialized health technology
to a wellness service. He described
how telemedicine would be leveraged
by automobile companies, grocery stores,
employers, and pharmacy chains to
create ‘retail health’ access
points that would provide a range
of monitoring, compliance and wellness
services. These competitive services
would serve the ‘worried well,’
chronically ill, e.g., diabetics,
as well as employers attempting to
contain employer healthcare costs.
Dr. Coughlin argued that the real
innovation in telemedicine was yet
to come and that it was not to be
found in the application of novel
technology, but rather in the development
of revolutionary telehealth-enabled
business models that drew revenue
from of out-of-pocket discretionary
income, employer subsidized services
and competitive networks of affinity
groups representing segments of the
aging baby boomer population.
His
lecture is based upon his on-going
research on telemedicine that he is
conducting with three of AgeLab’s
graduate students. Shaheen Malik and
Lisa Khaykin, both Technology and
Public Policy students, who are conducting
research on telemedicine and barriers
to its adoption by physicians, nurses
and healthcare insurers and Thomas
Hutchinson, an AgeLab MST student,
who is working with Dr. Coughlin to
define how telemedicine may enter
the car as a service and strategy
to reduce traffic accident fatalities.
The
AgeLab's telemedicine research is
sponsored by EDS and is in collaboration
with Partners Telemedicine at the
Massachusetts General Hospital and
Harvard University Medical School.
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