Telehealth News

Georgia Schools to Use Telemedicine for Concussion Testing, Treatment

Georgia's Ware County School District is launching a telehealth program with Gwinnett Medical Center-Duluth's Concussion Institute to give its students quick access to concussion specialists.

Source: ThinkStock

By Eric Wicklund

- Roughly 6,000 high school students in Georgia will have access to a telehealth platform for concussion testing and treatment this fall, part of a national trend toward using connected health platforms to speed up and improve care management for head injuries.

The Ware County School District is partnering with Gwinnet Medical Center-Duluth’s Concussion Institute to create an in-school telemedicine service for students. Using the Georgia-based Global Partnership for Telehealth’s Pathways platform, the school district will be able to access on-demand care whenever a student is suspected of incurring a concussion.

“Ware County has historically been on the forefront of providing specialty services via telemedicine, and the expansion to concussion care strengthens our pediatric offerings and helps us provide the best possible care for students,” Millie Thrift, the school district’s telemedicine coordinator, said in a press release.

Through the virtual care program, students will have same-day or next-day access to specialists at GMC for care management and coordination, including baseline ImPACT (Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing). The program will loop in parents or guardians, school nurses, primary care providers, athletic staff and educators to map out a care plan.

“The partnership with Ware County is yet another way we are able to fulfill our mission of providing quality healthcare to rural communities,” Nish Patel, vice president of operations at GMC-Duluth, said in the press release. “We recognize that appropriate medical staffing is critical to concussion care of athletes and non-athletes alike, and we are excited for the opportunity to expand into Ware County.”

Across the country, school districts are looking at everything from telehealth programs to mobile health devices to more quickly identify students who have suffered a concussion and improve care for them. Programs include telemedicine robots and tablets placed at the sidelines of sporting events to link school staff to clinicians, as well as AR and VR glasses and mHealth apps designed to help clinicians identify the severity of the injury and chart the proper treatment.

This past March, the US Food and Drug Administration granted breakthrough device designation to EYE-SYNC, a mobile health platform developed by Boston-based SyncThink. It consists of a VR headset with infrared cameras and an mHealth app on a tablet, and is used to assist clinicians in evaluating visual impairments, monitor recovery and support the rehabilitation of ocular-motor and ocular-vestibular deficits, and in the optimization of brain performance.

Late last year, Children’s National Medical Center announced that it was integrating the technology into its Safe Concussion Outcome Recovery and Education (SCORE) program, aimed at improving analysis and outcomes for those between the ages of six and 16 who suffer a concussion.

“The SCORE program at Children’s National was established in 2003 with the mission of promoting developmentally appropriate assessment and treatment for children with concussion,” Dr. Christopher Vaughan, assistant director of the SCORE program, said in a press release. “Measuring eye tracking in youth with the EYE-SYNC product may improve our multimodal and developmentally sensitive assessment process.”

Also last year, state officials in Arkansas announced a partnership with TeachAids, a Stanford-backed non-profit, to launch CrashCourse in every state high school. The VR-based program teaches high school-aged athletes on the causes and effects of a concussion.

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