Imagine how many lives would be saved if there was a doctor present in every ambulance, able to immediately evaluate the patient and proceed with the best care possible. An expensive proposition, despite the increase in the quality of care patients would receive en route to the hospital. That is almost what Jonathan Silverstein, M.D., Assistant Professor of Surgery, Director, Center for Clinical Information, intends to do with the help of Rick Stevens, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Computer Science, Co-Director of the Computation Institute, and Division Director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory; and Stephen Small, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Anesthesia & Critical Care. However, instead of attempting to physically place doctors in ambulances, he plans to do it digitally through the Advanced Biomedical Collaboration Testbed, or ABC Testbed.

The ABC Testbed is built on the foundation of the Access Grid, a system of multi-media displays and interactive environments currently used to support collaborations such as conferences, seminars, lectures, and training sessions. Currently there are nearly 250 nodes, or locations that utilize the Access Grid, all around the world. The aim of the ABC Testbed is to make that technology portable and apply it to the field of medicine, bringing doctors into ambulances, other floors of the hospital, and other facilities with the same capabilities.

This wireless system proposes to take some of the chaos out of emergency medicine by allowing the doctors to evaluate a patient en route, prepare properly for the patient's arrival, and continue care during the duration of the patient's stay, all without having to be in close physical proximity to the patient at all times. Additionally, it would allow multiple individuals working on the same case, such as radiologists, surgeons, nurses and paramedics, to immediately exchange relevant information both visually and auditorily without having to convene at the patient's bedside.

"The infrastructure for this project is there already in the Access Grid," said Silverstein. "Our goal for the ABC Testbed is to take that structure and apply it to mobile systems that allow doctors and other medical professionals to do their jobs in a more efficient and effective manner. Our hope is that by allowing medical professionals to interact regarding patients without being in the same place and to access images immediately while in the ER or in the operating room, we can improve the total quality of care provided."

In addition to its application in emergency medicine, Silverstein, with the help of his peers Stevens and Small, hopes to bring this technology into the operating room and into training facilities for medical students. By allowing surgeons to immediately access and reference three dimensional information while performing surgery and students to practice their craft through simulations using these images, the ABC Testbed truly merges medicine with existing and new technologies, to the benefit of doctors and patients alike.

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