Only tangentially related, but still relevant: I had a very positive experience with a telepresence neurologist this year - not in surgery, but in consultation.

Only tangentially related, but still relevant: I had a very positive experience with a telepresence neurologist this year - not in surgery, but in consultation. My mom had what we thought might be a stroke, but without the typical symptoms of a stroke. We wound up in the ER on a Saturday in a medium-sized metropolitan area (maybe 250k people). They wheeled her back for a head CT, and at the same time wheeled in a telepresence cart, with a computer screen and a video camera. Within a minute or so, a remote neurologist was on the screen talking to me. Before my mom was even wheeled back to the exam room, he had viewed the images and identified the bleed in her brain that was causing her vision problems. I was fascinated by all of this, so I asked the ER doctor and nurse about it, and they told me that with specialties like neurology, on a weekend they’d have to page someone to come in. It would likely be 30 minutes before they even walked in the door of the hospital. With the telepresence neurologist, the SLA was something like 5 minutes. That’s a huge difference when dealing with serious medical problems, and it’s not hyperbole to say that it will save lives. Another thing I learned that day: Not all strokes look like strokes, and any sudden-onset vision problem is a stroke until it’s been ruled out.