SonoSite on the small screen

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, September 24, 2006

BOTHELL – If you spot doctors or hospital technicians plugging their ears with white earphones and firing up a video iPod, don’t assume they’re catching the latest episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Instead, they might be viewing more practical fare – such as, for example, a tutorial on using ultrasound to examine the abdominal aorta as it extends down from the heart.

As doctors and hospital staff plow further into the digital age, SonoSite Inc. is offering teaching videos made for the smallest of screens. It’s handheld training for the company’s miniaturized ultrasound technology.

“It’s really important for physicians to have tools that are accessible and immediate,” said David Levesque, SonoSite’s vice president of global learning. “With a seven-minute video, you not only learn how to do the procedure, but also how to distinguish normal characteristics from abnormal.”

Since mid-June, two ultrasound training videos available for free on SonoSite’s Web site have been downloaded more than 1,100 times.

Digital tools are popping up more and more in the medical field, Levesque said. Residents in training can look up information from the Physicians’ Desk Reference right on their personal digital assistants. Many doctors are comfortable using BlackBerrys and Treos in their daily work.

Levesque helped to create audio training CDs when he worked for nearby Philips Medical Systems, which makes full-size ultrasound systems. At SonoSite, he already was brainstorming ways to make training available on demand when he got help from a doctor who uses the company’s machines.

“It was serendipitous actually. We are fortunate to have some very forward-thinking and bright customers,” he said.

The customer was Dr. Daniel Price, an academic emergency physician who teaches at Highland General Hospital in Oakland, Calif., and is an ultrasound expert. He and other physicians had started Mobile Medical Media to create medical training podcasts – videos intended to be played on iPod players.

Price showed Levesque a prototype.

“When he pulled this out and began playing this for me … it was so much in line with where I wanted to take this,” Levesque said.

In short order, Mobile Medical produced two training podcasts for SonoSite, which became its first client. SonoSite also obtained some customized “SonoSite”-engraved video iPods from Apple that it has given away to some customers to tout the new podcasts. In the coming weeks, another 10 training podcasts will be available via SonoSite’s Web site, Levesque said.

Most of the training doctors and technicians receive on SonoSite’s ultrasound machines is done in seminar settings, with a lecture and then time for hands-on training, Levesque said.

“Typically, you get just enough to feel like ‘I can learn this,’” he said. “What happens when you do that procedure … and you don’t have the information at your fingertips.”

That’s how the podcasts can be used. After doing it in a seminar, technicians can refresh their brains by watching the training videos, about seven minutes in length, over and over if need be.

Levesque emphasized, though, that they’re meant as a learning aid, not as the only training a doctor goes through.

“We’re not inferring these podcasts can replace hands-on learning,” he said. “We can’t replace that completely.”

But the videos can help. In a mini-study carried out in part by one of Mobile Medical’s physicians, 12 medical interns and residents were asked to watch one of the training videos and then identify the brachial plexus, the nerve network controlling movement and sensation in the arm.

With an ultrasound probe in hand, “all 12 had identified the appropriate structure within 16 seconds,” the doctor reported.

Mobile Medical is now working to make training videos available for more devices than just the iPod, including video-enabled cell phones, PDAs and other MP3 players, said Samuel Brooks, the company’s vice president of business affairs and development.

While SonoSite has made the initial videos free for downloading, both companies said that could change as well.

Levesque said he’s happy to be at the cutting edge when it comes to training doctors. He sees it as a nice complement to SonoSite’s vaunted products.

“We believe our mission, whether it’s in the design and delivery of ultrasound, is to innovate,” he said. “We want to make this training as ubiquitous and untethered as possible.”

Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.