St. Patrick Hospital of Missoula and 20 western Montana hospitals and clinics go online in latest medical innovation – Telemedicine

Missoula heart specialist Mark Sanz flashed a slide on the wall Saturday that proved his point: It was a faxed copy of an old electrocardiogram, sent to his office from Seeley Lake some months ago when a patient there was having heart trouble.

That old test, when compared with a new one, might have given Missoula doctors some clues to the patient’s problems. But the old printout was faded, and the fax further rendered it unreadable and unusable.

Saturday, St. Patrick Hospital showed off newly installed technology that could be the end of unreadable, faxed, blurry, late, lost and otherwise unusable medical records, at least for heart patients. It is the first phase of a program to digitally share and archive heart tests such as those called ECGs or EKGs, making them available on the Internet to doctors and hospitals in western Montana 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

About 20 western Montana hospitals and clinics are already linked and online; another 25 will be in the next few months, Sanz said.

By MEA ANDREWS of the Missoulian

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2005/06/19/news/local/news07.txt