Medtronic And SATELLIFE Help Fight Cardiovascular Disease In Developing Countries

Roye A. Bourke
2000-03-30

Press Release: Medtronic, a leading medical technology company, is providing funding for an e-mail- and web-based electronic discussion conference on cardiovascular disease established by SATELLIFE, a small non-profit in Watertown, Massachusetts.

The Program on Cardiovascular Disease, or ProCOR, aims to empower health professionals in developing countries with a crucial weapon needed to fight the burgeoning epidemic: Information.

A World Health Organization (WHO) study projects that coronary heart disease and stroke combined will be the leading cause of disability and death by the year 2020 in underdeveloped regions. Yet, clinical data and resources to combat the problem remain largely unavailable. By using the power of simple e-mail, however, ProCOR's moderated discussion forum is bridging the information gap between rich and poor countries.

"The goal of ProCOR is to create a dynamic international forum where health care providers, researchers, public health workers and others can share timely information and participate in raising the awareness about this emerging public health challenge," according to Nobel Peace Prize recipient Dr. Bernard Lown, founder of SATELLIFE.

Anyone with e-mail can subscribe to the discussion group free of charge. All messages go directly to a moderator who is an expert in the field of cardiology. Moderators screen incoming messages and post current research, clinical and public health information, and thus ensure the high scientific quality of the discussion. Additional features of the conference include medical literature summaries, monthly commentaries from leading experts, resources about community cardiology, and a global registry of cardiologists.
ProCOR is guided by a distinguished Advisory Committee comprising colleagues from internationally recognized institutions around the world.

"When cardiologists and public health workers from China, to Latin America, to Africa can converse and share the latest information on the effects of tobacco on cardiovascular health, for example, there is real opportunity for problem solving," states Holly Ladd, Executive Director of SATELLIFE. "Information is power, but the kind of information that ProCOR provides can be life-saving."

Officially launched at the Fourth International Conference on Preventive Cardiology in 1997, ProCOR is a joint project of SATELLIFE and the Lown Cardiovascular Center in Brookline. The discussion group now includes over 500 participants from 61 countries and is recognized around the world as a source of the highest quality and most up-to-date information on cardiovascular illness, especially as it relates to developing countries.

"The Medtronic Foundation is committed to empowering people to live healthy, productive lives, particularly those most in need," states Marty Cushing, Coordinator of Medtronic Healthy Countries division. "We feel it is important to support programs such as ProCOR that utilize the power of information technology to improve global health."

ProCOR was represented at the G-7/G-8 telematics project in New Delhi, India last October. The forum is being used by the Latin America Society of Atherosclerosis in developing its prevention guidelines. ProCOR was also featured at the International Telecommunication Union's Second World Telemedicine Symposium in Buenos Aires, Argentina last June, and at the Africa Telemedicine Conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

In an e-mail to SATELLIFE, Dr. Paul Wangai, Jr., a public health physician in Nairobi, writes, "Faced with a scarcity of updates and fiscal limitations on subscriptions, further complicated with unreliable mail, ProCOR is the BEST and MOST RELIABLE update we receive. Keep up the excellent service, which is a 'life line' to some of us." (caps not added).