Krisan Palmer
Saint John
Krisan Palmer almost died working as a nurse in Saint John, NB, in 1993 when a latent allergy
to latex-based products suddenly blew up into life-threatening anaphylactic shock. Within
minutes the cardiac nurse developed a rash all over her body and had trouble breathing until
colleagues administered medication. Ultimately, the crisis proved to be a mixed blessing.
Palmer was unable to wear sterile gloves again, and could no longer treat patients in person.
She was assigned to a job in the hospital admitting department. Instead, she turned to high
tech to stay in the health-care game. Now she is one of the country’s foremost experts on
long-distance applications for health care and has helped build one of the country’s most
sophisticated telehealth networks.
Palmer is the telehealth director for the Atlantic Health Sciences Corporation, which runs 12 hospitals and clinics in New Brunswick. One of her most important projects is the expansion of a system called IRIS (Interactive Real-Time Imaging and Data Solution). IRIS is a custom-made diagnostic and consultation system that has been used by specialists to treat 137 patients with all kinds of ailments in some of the most remote parts of the province. It allows doctors to examine patients over a secure local-area network with virtual stethoscopes and real-time video, and it offers storage technology that enables nurses to cache pictures and data until a doctor is available to examine them. Doctors can employ the versatile equipment for a proliferating number of health-care uses that range from speech-pathology diagnosis to postoperation cardiology to psychiatric assessments and care, nutrition counseling and many others.
When it came to building the system, Palmer was definitely hands-on. A California tech firm wrote the software for the IRIS system to her specifications, and Palmer’s husband connected the various devices to a single power source. It took Palmer five minutes to persuade Hayden Bush, the chief of psychiatry at Saint John Regional Hospital, to set up the first IRIS unit in St. Stephen to treat patients and connect it with a variety of medical experts in Saint John. "He said, ‘What’s new?’ I told him, and he said ‘Let’s do it.’" Just 10 months later, there are eight units, each composed of a video camera and TV monitor, computer and diagnostic peripherals. Each unit is mobile within the hospital or clinic where it is stationed. The units cover an estimated 200,000 patients, and Palmer has plans for three more installations in the next month. Says she: "This job is the closest I’ll ever get to nursing again." She may have lost her first professional love, but New Brunswick is a lot better for it.