Rotary Club International – Herzog Hospital : Tele-Health Video-Conference Project

Through the initiative of the Jerusalem Rotary Club, an international Rotary fund raising campaign has been launched to establish Herzog Hospital as a major international videoconference Tele-health Center. This project was triggered by Herzog’s participation in a live international videoconference on Parkinson’s Disease and depression in 2005, with participants from hospitals in Canada, South Africa, Jordan and the WHO in Geneva Switzerland. This successful live video exchange of ideas highlighted to Herzog the great importance of ongoing videoconferences. The Jerusalem Rotary Club saw the opportunity for Herzog to develop as an educational video health center, and offered to raise funds to enable the Hospital to purchase the necessary video equipment instead of renting each time. Together, Rotary and Hospital staff have developed a comprehensive program to provide live video health exchanges on a regular basis.

 

The recent teleconference, held during April 2006, featured a case presentation on Vascular Dementia, by Dr. Gustavo Roman from San-Antonio University in Texas. The goal of this particular telecast was to help the patient, but another outcome was the ability to communicate freely from remote locations.

 

The event demonstrated the ability of utilizing the common language of healthcare to transcend political, language, and cultural barriers. This experience showed the value of international professional collaboration as related to a complex healthcare issue.

 

Dr. Yakir Kaufman, Director of Neurology at Herzog says that these video conferences increase academic exchanges between medical professionals throughout the world, with a special focus on the Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian medical communities. An objective of the teleconference will be to exchange knowledge among the participants utilizing a comparative needs assessment and evaluation process, focusing on the improvement of healthcare outcomes utilizing teleconferencing as a communication medium.

 

The teleconference center is located at Herzog’s Lily Silver Education Center.

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