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Unified Communications Featured Article
April 27, 2009
Polycom Telepresence Brings Healthcare to Underserved Patients
By As with education, IP communications’ use in healthcare generally falls into one of two categories: streamlining operations or providing direct services.
In education, that amounts to the difference, say, between saving money by allowing school officials to collaborate more efficiently on an IP-based network, and creating a hands-on “virtual classroom” that allows students from different schools to share a science lesson.
These days, efforts to streamline operations in healthcare often involve so-called “e-medical records” – a term that surfaced more than once during last year’s presidential campaign in the United States. An entire industry is emerging to meet demand for products that will ease transmission of medical information. For example, analysts say the market for wireless medical devices that send and receive healthcare records could grow from $3 billion per year now to $7.7 billion by 2012.
Today, a Pleasanton, California-based provider of telepresence, video and voice communications announced that its technology is being used by a “telemedicine” group to help serve patients directly as well as manage visual communication activities and resources, speed deployment and ease integration with existing applications.
Specifically, officials at Polycom Inc. say, Clinical e-Health Solutions is using a handful of Polycom (News - Alert) video conferencing systems and added the Polycom Converged Management Application 5000 to its network.
It's an area that Polycom officials say has tremendous growth potential, due mostly to demographics and the rising cost of providing healthcare.
The company’s global director of healthcare, Ron Emerson (News - Alert), told TMCnet in an interview that with 72 million baby boomers coming to an age where they qualify for retirement benefits – combined with healthcare provider shortages and the anticipated cost of healthcare doubling by 2016 – more and more organizations are turning to telemedicine.
The company’s global director of healthcare, Ron Emerson (News - Alert), told TMCnet in an interview that with 72 million baby boomers coming to an age where they qualify for retirement benefits – combined with healthcare provider shortages and the anticipated cost of healthcare doubling by 2016 – more and more organizations are turning to telemedicine.
Polycom’s collaborative solutions are designed specifically with those challenges in mind, Emerson said.
“We understand the workflow, the clinical needs and the requirements for maintaining the highest level of patient care, while optimizing resources,” Emerson told TMCnet. “We support caregiver communication, telemedicine, medical education and administrative needs in healthcare organizations around the globe.”
The desktop video systems effectively are bringing equal access to high-quality healthcare, the companies say, by allowing physicians who are gravitating toward more urban areas to still communicate with patients and collaborate with each other through telepresence.
The systems do not serve as a substitute for in-person examinations, but they do allow members of Clinical e-Health Solutions’ widely dispersed team of clinicians to call anyone else on the network directly from their laptops or PCs. Polycom’s conferencing systems are ideal for use in medical care facilities, the company says, because they’re space-efficient products whose 17-inch LCD monitor can double as a PC display when not in use for video calls.
Dr. Carl Keldie, chief medical officer for Clinical e-Health Solutions, said that the need for telemedicine services in certain communities is evident. His team of physicians noticed several trends were converging to create an opportunity that made perfect sense for a company that knows how to deliver telemedicine cost-effectively.
“Our goal was to equip the fast-growing network of clinics that provide primary and specialty healthcare to consumers with the resources and technologies they need to effectively treat these patients,” Keldie said. “Our Polycom telemedicine network allows us to leverage a pool of primary care and specialty care clinicians who enable these facilities to provide that level of care, without requiring the patients or the physicians to travel to meet in person.”
Polycom’s solutions have outdone competitors’ offerings, he added, and the group has saved money by using Polycom exclusively, standardizing its telemedicine network.
From Clinical e-Health Solutions, the telemedicine solutions also save on travel costs and time associated with travel, meaning physicians can pack more direct medical care into their workdays, he said.
That’s translated into a retention tool for key staffers ath the company.
“Our oncologist started his practice in Pennsylvania,” Keldie said. “When he announced he was moving to Washington State and would need to look for another job, we said, ‘You already have a job – with us.’ Today he serves our Pennsylvania clients from an office near his home in Washington using Polycom.”
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Michael Dinan is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Michael's articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Michael Dinan
