From a series on researchers and innovators at Boston Children’s Hospital. At left, David Casavant demos TeleCAPE at a Boston Children’s Hospital Innovators Showcase.

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention, so when David Casavant, MD, observed his teenagers routinely using FaceTime and Skype to connect with friends, he had a lightbulb moment. Could videoconferencing help him support his patients—children and young adults who require mechanical ventilation in their homes?

“It just seemed obvious,” says Casavant, a physician in the Boston Children’s Hospital’s CAPE (Critical Care, Anesthesia and Perioperative Extension & Home Ventilation) program, part of the Division of Critical Care Medicine. “In my work we are always weighing the risk versus the benefit to the patient. It’s easy for ambulatory patients to swing by their primary care office, get a prescription or go for an x-ray, but that’s not the case for patients who have to have their oxygen, their suction or their ventilator. If you don’t have to put them on the road you are better off not to.” …