UAMS ANGELS Program Nationally Recognized as IT Leader

By Nate Hinkel

 Curtis Lowery, M.D., collected yet another award for his groundbreaking ANGELS program, this time for being an IT leader.

July 1, 2010 | The award-winning Antenatal and Neonatal Guidelines, Education and Learning System (ANGELS) program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) recently was recognized as a national leader in using information technology to benefit society.

Curtis Lowery, M.D., chairman of the UAMS Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, was commemorated June 7 as a Laureate by the Computerworld Honors Program at the 22nd Annual Laureates Medal Ceremony & Gala Awards Evening at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C. Computerworld is an international leader of providing technology news and information for IT influencers around the world.

The Computerworld Honors Program unites leaders of the world’s biggest information technology companies to recognize the most outstanding user achievements in technology each year. The technology achievements honored by the program are preserved and protected in national archives, and in over 350 universities, museums, and research institutions throughout the world.

“Being recognized by the Computerworld Honors program affords ANGELS the opportunity to be aligned with other leaders in information technology,” Lowery said. “But more importantly, it gives ANGELS a platform to disseminate knowledge and promote the use of technology in health care, demonstrating results that can be seen throughout a rural state such as Arkansas.”

Established in 2003 by the UAMS Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the Arkansas Department of Human Services, ANGELS encompasses several complex women’s health issues including poor health, poverty, low birth weight and the medically underserved.

By developing a clinical telemedicine system that includes more than 40 sites statewide, rural communities are equipped for medical consultations and education.

This revolutionary system was created to ensure local access to specialized high-risk obstetrical care services that has allowed thousands of patients to remain at home during difficult pregnancies, eliminating the need to make an unnecessary trip to a faraway medical site.

“Each Laureate selected for this honor understands the importance of using one’s resources and technical prowess to benefit one’s fellow man,” said Bob Carrigan, chairman of the Computerworld Honors Program Chairmen’s Committee and CEO of IDG Communications Worldwide.

Some highlights of the ANGELS program since its inception include:

• Increasing the proportion of low-birth-weight infants from rural areas delivered at UAMS from 37.7 percent to 42.1 percent during the first two years of the program

• Reducing the 60-day mortality rate by 0.5 percent after adjusting for changes in case mix during the first two years of the program

• Fully-equipping 24 rural sites with telemedicine technology and an additional 20 sites with teleconferencing equipment

• Finalizing 94 obstetrical, 35 neonatal, and two pediatric evidence-based guidelines available for free on the ANGELS’ website with 1,639 national and 59 international registered users

• Delivering more than 5,600 high-risk obstetrical telemedicine consultations to women in rural Arkansas since 2003

“Like most breakthroughs in science and academia, ANGELS takes ideas and innovations that previously existed and combines them in novel and powerfully collaborative ways,” Lowery said. “As ANGELS spreads its wings and covers more patients in need, more telehealth programs look to us as a model for successful technology-driven health care interventions.”