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Verizon Wireless has been in the Arkansas market less than a year, but the company has already made an impact on local healthcare when it worked with UAMS, the VA and Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services on a way to send information from the field to the hospital.

The system allows for paramedics to transmit heart rhythms wirelessly to handheld devices like a Treo or BlackBerry.

This is the first trial in Arkansas," said Bob Franke, director of business sales Verizon Wireless, who added that the system is beginning to be used by other around the country.

How it works is that the paramedics plug a phone into a heart monitor using a special and the cell phone then acts as a modem transmit the rhythms to the cardiologist at UAMS or the VA.

Franke said that the system is similar to Verizon's mobile office software and all that is needed on the physician's end is special software loaded onto the portable device.

The system quickens response time.

There's no way we can get the treatment less than 90 minutes as recommended by standards," said Dr. Ibrahim Fahdi, a cardiologist at UAMS. "Those physicians the cardiologists will have the ability to look at the EKG even before the patient hits the emergency room."

Jon Swanson, who serves as the director for MEMS, said the system requires new heart monitors and that the ambulance service is in the process of upgrading its 42 paramedic-level ambulances. MEMS has more than 500,000 people in its coverage area.

February 2007

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