Iowa experts agree: Telehealth can transform health care system for the better

Speeding down the New Jersey turnpike while drinking a double espresso, I felt a sudden thumping in my chest followed by a rapid-fire series of beats; breathing was no longer effortless. When the chaotic beating wouldn’t resolve, I pulled over at a rest stop and took my pulse. It was 150, two and a half times my normal heart rate.

That was 1993, in the early days of telemedicine. Fortunately and ironically, I was a sales rep who sold trans-telephonic cardiac monitoring equipment capable of recording a person’s heart rhythm in real time whenever or wherever they experienced symptoms. I reached into my trunk for a demo unit, attached the sticky electrodes to my chest, then plugged the wires into the battery-operated monitor and pressed the record button. Next, I phoned my best customer — a cardiology department at a Boston teaching hospital — to transmit the 60-second recording. The uncomfortable sensations I was experiencing turned out to be a cardiac arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation.