Video: Telemedicine bridges the gap

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SEATTLE - What do you do when you have a sick child but you live hundreds of miles from the doctor?

Seattle Children's Hospital is helping more and more young patients get diagnosed via the internet. 

Dr. Mark Lewin, chief of cardiology, sat at Seattle Children's Hospital four years ago as he viewed a life-threatening heart defect in Jeannette Flittie's baby. 

Christian was one of his first young patients diagnosed through telemedicine at Children's.

"I had no idea this kind of technology even existed," Jeannette said. "We were out in a little beachside community, the farthest northwest corner of Washington that we could be, without being in the ocean or up in Canada."

"Sometimes we have very sick babies, who we know right from the get-go have a problem," Dr. Lewin said. "And we need to start treating them with medications to allow them to survive to be transported here."

If a child needs follow-up care, telemedicine is becoming a way for families and doctors to connect long distance.

Dr. Sandy Melzer heads the program.

"For many families it's also very inconvenient to travel here," she said. "They have to come over the mountains in the winter. They have to come on planes."

That's because children are referred from as far away as Alaska and Montana.

"As shortages of pediatric specialists increase, I see a future where this technology will become increasingly utilized around the country," she said.

Doctors at Children's repaired Christian's heart defect with open heart surgery.

And today?

"He can do whatever his parents will let him do," Lewin said.

The telemedicine hook-up provides emotional healing too. Kids with long hospital stays have been able to visit with family and friends as far away as remote Alaskan villages.

Kids can even meet with their psychiatrists through telemedicine.

It's available to families who don't have access to mental health specialists in their own rural communities.