Using donated videoconferencing technology, a charity is delivering advanced medical treatment virtually to sick children in developing countries.

Founded in 2000, Medical Missions for Children (MMFC) connects American specialist physicians with hospitals around the world to provide consultations to seriously ill children.

"I don't know what we'd do without videoconferencing," said Frank Brady, the founder and chairman of MMFC. "I spend three hours a day in meetings with different people in videoconferencing."

MMFC has built up its telemedicine program using donated equipment from Polycom, a vendor that specializes in video communications technology. Mostly the charity uses Polycom's VSX 7000e and VSX 7000s videoconferencing cabinets to connect doctors from dozens of North American hospitals to children and doctors in the developing world. MMFC has deployed these Polycom standard-definition units to hospitals in 84 developing countries. The charity connects to an average of 10 hospitals in each country via a private IP network to its network of consulting hospitals in the United States.

Doctors who are looking for specialized consultations through MMFC will email their patients' records. The charity then finds an appropriate specialist and arranges a consultation wherein the U.S. doctor meets with the foreign doctor and his patient through video. The doctor can then do the examination, zooming in and out and panning the camera for the best view. Local doctors can also attach medical equipment to the local Polycom videoconferencing cabinet so that the U.S. doctors can personally take blood pressure readings, EKGs and other diagnostics.

"The doctor gets a good read on the child," Brady said, "and it becomes a learning experience for the local doctor as well because these are medical consultations."

Recently, MMFC has started expanding into high-definition videoconferencing using donated Polycom HDX 8000 and HDX 9000 series equipment. Brady said he has connected his headquarters in St. Joseph's Children's Hospital in Patterson, N.J., with St. Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., so that sick children on the east coast can receive consultations from cancer specialists at St. Jude's without having to travel to Memphis.

Brady said his charity will slowly expand its use of high-definition video technology, depending on the continued largesse of Polycom. It will soon connect its Patterson location to a hospital in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. "I imagine over the coming years we'll be putting high definition into hospitals where we have enough bandwidth and cases to support it," he said.