VisualShare - communicate with pictures - software solutions for image sharing and collaboration. VisualShare builds applications for organizations that need to share images, conduct reviews and document results.

LOGAN — Once a week, pediatric nurse practitioner Jeanlee Carver would pack up all her work from the past seven days — medical files, pictures, examination notes — and make the 80-mile drive to Salt Lake City to meet with child abuse experts at Primary Children's Medical Center.


Jeanlee Carver and Chris Cochella work with TeleCAM™. The program provides prompt answers to local children's justice centers.

Scott G. Winterton, Deseret Morning News
There, the medical teams would spend hours going through the case of each child seen at the Logan and Weber/Morgan Children's Justice Centers, looking for evidence of abuse or other medical conditions that could present themselves as such.
The process was time-consuming and cumbersome, but it beat sending the information by FedEx or as an unsecure attachment to an e-mail. Or, in more urgent cases, trying to track down busy doctors for a telephonic consultation.
Now, at her convenience, Carver can input individual case information into a new system designed to allow online collaboration between experts at the Salt Lake hospital and practitioners in rural areas.
Called TeleCAM™ (Teleconsultation in Child Abuse Medication), the Web-based system lets members of Primary Children's Safe and Health Families Medical Assessment Team examine detailed reports and pictures and offer their opinions on cases of possible physical or sexual abuse. Communication takes place entirely online, and the secure program can be accessed anywhere with Internet access.
"It really has epitomized our ability to communicate and used the state-of-the-art to evaluate child abuse," Carver said. "The children get to stay right here, and yet we still have that collaboration."
The goal of the program, which has been used in Ogden for about six months and was installed in Logan just last week, is to provide fast and efficient answers to local children's justice centers.
"Our goal is to keep not only the patients in their communities, but it also does provide a back-up for the teams," said Dr. Lori Frasier, Safe and Healthy Families' medical director.
"What people want in rural communities is to feel connected with people with more expertise," she said.

Chris Cochella, left, nurse practitioner Jeanlee Carver and Dr. Lori Frasier discuss TeleCAM™ program.

Scott G. Winterton, Deseret Morning News
A second eye is often vital in determining the difference between abuse symptoms and other medical conditions, Frasier said. "It's amazing how many cases that we see where we rule out abuse rather than rule it in."
A false diagnosis could lead to unwarranted prosecution and children being needlessly removed from their home, a situation that happened recently in Logan when a teenage boy was accused of beating his younger sister.
By quickly linking local practitioners with experts, the TeleCAM™ program could prevent that, Carver said. "The sooner we can get an answer and get to the root of the situation . . . the better it is for those children."
The program, which was developed by Salt Lake-based VisualShare, will next be implemented in Children's Justice Centers in Davis and Utah counties, followed by Vernal and Roosevelt. Funding so far has come largely from the Utah Attorney General's Office, though participants have applied for a grant from the federal National Institutes of Health for a six-month feasibility study.
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E-mail: awelling@desnews.com
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© 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company