About MedEdOnline
MedEdOnline went
live on June 15, 2005. It was launched in conjunction with the Annual Scientific
Meeting of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, in Las Vegas. MedEdOnline
is a web-based educational venture jointly sponsored by South Carolina based National
Baromedical Services (NBS) and the Baromedical
Research Foundation (BRF).
NBS enjoys over two decades of hyperbaric management, administrative, contracting, and related consulting experience. Its principal has 40 years of experience in all phases of undersea diving and hyperbaric administration, education, medicine, research, and technology. NBS clients cross the continuum of the health care delivery system, and include health insurance organizations, diving education and safety associations. NBS served as a principal informational resource for a summary of the scientific literature supporting hyperbaric medicine for both the HHS Office of Inspector General Report on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Technology Assessment Committee Report on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. NBS afforded this support via its electronic hyperbaric library database. With over 7,000 articles representing essentially every significant basic science and clinical hyperbaric publication over the past two centuries, the NBS literature database is the world’s largest such resource. It forms the backbone of the NBS educational and marketing initiatives.
NBS enjoys a reputation as the leading international provider of hyperbaric medicine training. Some 400 physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals, undergo Primary and Advanced training at our headquarters facility each year (University of South Carolina School of Medicine/Palmetto Health Richland Hospital).
NBS has a long-standing reputation as an organization of high ethical standards, and committed patient advocacy. NBS is equally committed to the appropriate application of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Our operating model is emulated by many hyperbaric programs. All of the NBS hyperbaric centers become accredited by the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, and quickly evolve into regional centers of medical excellence. NBS has pioneered an evidence-based approach to hyperbaric medicine and related wound healing. These therapeutic algorithms represent best practice standards for many hyperbaric centers, and are sought for selected case reviews by managed care and commercial health insurers.
NBS serves as the clinical practice review organization and fiscal intermediary for the Divers Alert Network’s accident insurance program. To this end, NBS has developed, introduced, and manages, the Diving Preferred Provider Network, and its international counterpart, the IPPN.
NBS founded, and supports, the Baromedical Research Foundation. This tax-exempt non-profit organization has, via its basic science laboratory at the USC School of Medicine Department of Surgery, studied several key aspects of hyperbaric safety. It has further served to elucidate hyperbaric medicine’s multifactorial mechanistic basis. In 2000, the Foundation developed and introduced a controlled, randomized and blinded, clinical trial of hyperbaric oxygen in the treatment of late radiation tissue injury. This multi-center and internationally enrolled project, presently involving six countries, is the largest such undertaking in the hyperbaric medicine field. Its first results were published in September 2008 (Clarke RE et al., Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment of Chronic Refractory Radiation Proctitis: A Randomized and Controlled Double-blind Crossover Trial with Long-term Follow up, Int. J. Radiation Oncology Biol. Phys, Vol. 72, No. 1, pp. 134–143, 2008).