FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 2, 1999

CONTACT: Carole Gan
(916)734-9040

UC DAVIS ESTABLISHES TELEMEDICINE LEARNING CENTER

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) - With a $1 million grant from the California Healthcare Association, UC Davis is pioneering the first telemedicine training center in California. Scheduled to open in October, the Telemedicine Learning Center will train hundreds of health care providers and support staff throughout California in telemedicine, a discipline that uses video and computer technology to extend health care to areas that lack doctors.

The UC Davis Telemedicine Learning Center, the only such program west of the Rockies, will be housed at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento and administered by UC Davis Health System's TeleHealth Program.

"Telemedicine is expanding very rapidly," says Thomas S. Nesbitt, MD, acting assistant dean for TeleHealth, Outreach, and Special Projects. "With this growth is a desperate need for training in how to operate the new programs. The UC Davis Telemedicine Learning Center will train people in the clinical, technical and operational aspects of telemedicine, from how to conduct an examination via telemedicine to how to repair the equipment."

The $1,050,644 grant for the Telemedicine Learning Center is part of a $5 million award made by The California Endowment to the California Healthcare Association's California Telehealth & Telemedicine Center to support telemedicine throughout California. According to Dr. Nesbitt, the total grant should enable the number of telemedicine sites statewide to exceed 100.

"California will be a showcase for the nation for applications for telehealth and telemedicine," says Sharon Avery, executive director of the California Telehealth & Telemedicine Center.

Telemedicine uses electronic communication technologies in the practice of medicine ( providing health care and information by moving data and information instead of people. Telemedicine can extend the reach of such specialists as dermatologists and oncologists, and link primary care providers in remote areas to the resources of a major medical center.

Increased health access is a primary benefit of telemedicine. Telemedicine can make a doctor's care available to schools that can no longer afford full-time school nurses, to homebound seniors and others who face transportation problems, and to inmates in correctional facilities that lack on-site physicians, among others.

The $1 million Telemedicine Learning Center grant is for three years, but a portion of the grant is earmarked for development of long-term telemedicine infrastructure development. A three-year plan calls for training at least 240 representatives of California organizations interested in developing or expanding telemedicine programs. In addition, faculty members from northern and southern California medical schools and other professional schools will participate in workshops designed to incorporate telemedicine information into their curricula. UC Davis has also committed to creating a Southern California telemedicine learning center next year.

"The Telemedicine Learning Center will be key to promoting the development of telemedicine and telehealth in the state of California," says Jeff Ellis, director of the California Telehealth & Telemedicine Center. "UC Davis has the most advanced telemedicine program in California, a program that has been recognized as one of the best in the country. It's natural that the Telemedicine Learning Center would be developed and administered by UC Davis."

The UC Davis Health System TeleHealth Program has been honored for three consecutive years as one of the top ten telemedicine sites in the nation by Telemedicine & Telehealth Networks magazine. The program serves primary care clinics, home health-care services, correctional health facilities and rural hospitals throughout Northern California.

"Our mission is to improve access to specialty services and extend beyond traditional barriers," says Jana Katz, manager of TeleHealth at UC Davis Health System.

The new Telemedicine Learning Center will further this mission. "There are a lot of incentives right now to do telemedicine," Dr. Nesbitt says. "It's important to us that people do it right. If conducted appropriately, telemedicine can significantly improve the quality of care to people in medically underserved communities."

The California Endowment, based in Woodland Hills, was established in 1996 as a private, non profit foundation charged with expanding access to affordable, quality health care for underserved individuals and communities statewide, and with promoting fundamental improvements in the health status of all Californians.

The two-year-old California Telehealth & Telemedicine Center is an effort by the California Healthcare Association, which represents hospitals and health systems, to improve and expand telemedicine programs in rural and medically underserved communities around the state. Support for the California Telehealth & Telemedicine Center is from the California Endowment, the James Irvine Foundation and the Sierra Health Foundation.

More information about the UC Davis Telemedicine Program is available at http://telemedicine.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/research.html. News releases from UC Davis Health System are also available at http://news.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu.

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