Transcript:
our next speaker probably needs no
introduction in fact in our first
meeting he told me that he’s actually
been in the telehealth world really
since before I was born
and I am no spring chicken believe me so
he spent his professional career working
with governments educational
institutions and businesses to address
the problems of cost quality and access
to health care today he’s going to
discuss be where we are today with
telehealth and the future of the
healthcare delivery system and the role
and impact on the per patient the
provider and the payer please join me in
welcoming the father of telemedicine and
a founding member of the ATA to the
stage dr. jay sanders
[Applause]
well you know I’d like to begin with a
huge thank you not simply from me but
from my professor of medicine dr. Ken
Byrd who told me about his idea of
telemedicine in 1967 when I was a
third-year resident in medicine at the
MGH and I was actually running the
emergency department a late summer day
standing out in front of the ER waiting
for the next usual Boston traffic
accident victim to come wheeling in from
EMS when all of a sudden the ER doors
opened wildly and they’re standing in
the door was my professor of medicine
dr. Ken bird red-faced and sweating and
looking upset and I knew exactly why
because Ken bird
like many Harvard professors in those
days as a full professor was making a
grand total of $8,000 a year and he was
moonlighting like every other Harvard
professor and he was moonlighting as
medical director at Logan Airport
Medical station
those of you who have ever been to
Boston before the two additional tunnels
from the airport to the center of the
city will know that it used to take a
minimum of an hour each way to go from
the airport to the MGH and Ken had to do
this every single day and this
particular summer day while parked under
the Charles River in the Sumner tunnel
because that was the only tunnel there
was no Callahan tunnel there was no Ted
Williams tunnel he got an idea and as he
came storming through the door he saw me
and he came walking up to me and he
grabbed my arm and he said J and I said
I know dr. Bert I know you got caught in
the traffic again he said yes he said
but I had this idea what do you think
about it he said what if I get two TV
cameras remember this is 1967 what if I
get two TV cameras and I put one here at
the MGH ER and one at Logan Airport and
I started to examine patients over this
TV system now you have to understand I
was a resident he was my professor I
thought this was a stupidest idea I’d
ever heard of in my life but I had
enough common sense to say gee dr. Byrd
that’s a very interesting idea by 1969
we had a fully functioning telemedicine
system and by the way there’s been a lot
of debate about where the origin of the
term telemedicine came from to me it’s I
don’t understand why people are
wondering it was dr. Byrd he looked at
me and he said well look we can’t call
this television medicine because that’s
what we had television cameras he said
let’s call it telemedicine that’s how it
started okay and in 1969 we had a fully
functioning telemedicine system in black
and white there was no color but
fascinatingly the chair of pathology dr.
Benjamin Castleman the chair of
dermatology dr. Tom Fitzpatrick very
quickly adapted to the grayscale so they
could tell whether something was there
with feminists or not simply by the
intensity of the grayness every clinical
chief of service started to use the
system we even had developed an
electronic stethoscope that seems
commonplace today it wasn’t then but it
was one chief of service who said this
will never ever work in my area and who
is that
that was dr. Tom Dwyer chair of
psychiatry now you might imagine my
professor and by the way please
understand Ken Byrd is the father of
telemedicine I’m not I’m just a good
student of his Ken bird came to Tom