The California Department of Corrections has used telemedicine, a rapidly developing application of clinical medicine where medical information is transferred through the phone or via Internet to treat adult prisoners. And a result saved the state $13 million last year, largely by reducing transportation and security costs.

 

The state been using telemedicine to treat inmates for about ten years, relying on it to 'facilitate consultations with medical specialists,' according to HealthLeaders Media. The state provides about 16,000 telemedicine visits with doctors in 22 specialty fields through the use of $20,000 camera systems purchased for each institution.

 

It's being used widely - in Japan the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the University of Yamanashi and the Information Technology Center of the University of Tokyo conducted a field test of an ophthalmology telemedicine system developed by the University of Yamanashi, according to industry journal TechOn.

 

'In the field test, an eye doctor at the University of Yamanashi examined a subject at the University of Tokyo in real time. The terminal device used by the doctor and a remote-controlled microscope were connected via the JGN2plus, a testbed network environment managed by Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.'

 

HealthLeaders Media explains that one reason it's been used to such good advantage in the prisons is because there's 'a large number of patients with a mix of common yet treatable diseases, contracts with board-certified specialty providers willing to devote their time and a single payer model to simplify the revenue stream,' as well as 'having all your patients in one location.'

 

Bonnie Noble, director of clinical operations for California Prison Health Care Services, says telehealth 'saved taxpayers $13 million that otherwise would have been spent in guarding and transporting inmates long distances to see specialists, or about $800 per encounter just last year.' This is because most prisons are located in rural areas, such as the San Joaquin Central Valley, where specialists are in short supply, HealthLeaders Media said.

 

Noble explained that telemedicine reduces the risk to the public when inmates are out of the institution, reduces staff time to process paperwork and allows access to specialists who aren't available locally.

 

And according to The Daily Star, a Bangladeshi telemedicine company 'is set to provide healthcare services for more than 5 million South Asian workers in the Middle East and Malaysia in a couple of months.'

 

The journal reported that Telemedicine Reference Center 'has already signed agreements with around 25 Gulf and Malaysian companies that recruit workers from South Asia.'

 

According to a state of California study, about 25 other states use telemedicine to provide care to inmates. Saint Luke's Health System, an 11-hospital group with 1,321 beds in Kansas City, MO, serving Missouri and Kansas, recently announced that it has teamed up with Correctional Medical Services and the Missouri Department of Corrections to bring telehealth to Missouri's 30,000-prisoner system.