The History of Telemedicine at Texas Tech
Telemedicine began at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) in 1989 as a grant-funded research project, originally designed to connect the four campuses of the Health Sciences Center located in Lubbock, Amarillo, Odessa, and El Paso. With the use of distance communications for education and teleconferencing, it was logical that links could also be made from the main Lubbock campus to distant rural sites for the purpose of live medical consultations.
The first teleconsultation was conducted in 1990 between a physician from Alpine, Texas, and a consultant in Lubbock. This initial consultation changed the possibilities of medicine in West Texas because patients in remote areas now had access to specialty consultations that previously would have required traveling great distances. During the first week that teleconsultations were conducted, the opportunities and advantages that telemedicine could offer were illustrated when a baby girl’s life was saved due to a teleconsultation between her general practitioner in the rural Big Bend area of Texas and a neonatologist in Lubbock (See Aida Porras story).
Between the years of 1990 and 1993, TTUHSC engineers invented the "TeleDoc™", a single portable integrated package that provides the opportunity for live interactive video consultations. The unit features a roll about cabinet carrying cameras, TV screens and electronic exam equipment. While many of the TeleDoc™s remain in use, Texas Tech is bringing new cutting edge telemedicine solutions on line. The new version TeleDoc™ utilizing smaller desk top computer technology which is less expensive and more versatile. Throughout the years telemedicine has flourished at Tech. Since the initial consultation in 1990, more than 18,000 
consultations have been conducted at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Annual telemedicine examinations number more than 3,000. These consultations have been both to patients in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as well as to patients in rural areas and have been in such specialties as orthopedics, general surgery, internal medicine, urology, gastroenterology, neurology, psychology, pediatrics and psychiatry.
The telemedicine program at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center has been recognized nationally through several distinctions and honors. The program was ranked in the top ten programs of its kind by Telemedicine and Telehealth Network Magazine in December 1996 and December 1997 and was included in the "Top 12 List" of telemedicine programs by Telemedicine Today Magazine in June 1998. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center's telemedicine program was also a feature telemedicine system in Government Video Magazine in April 1998. The Texas Tech telemedicine program was named to the Telemedicine Hall of Fame in Telehealth Magazine in August 1999, one of only four programs to receive this honor. In addition, faculty and staff members of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center are frequently asked tomake presentations, nationally and internationally, regarding the telemedicineprogram and its success.