Last week at HIMMS08, the annual conference of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, Nortel (News - Alert) and Polycom announced a healthcare specific, telepresence solution designed to empower hospitals and medical facilities to offer their patients high-quality healthcare virtually anywhere, by taking advantage of such advanced technologies as HD video, HD voice and collaboration.

 

These solutions are designed to enable healthcare providers to be more efficient and productive by creating multi-location virtual meetings that will have geographically dispersed physicians, surgeons, researchers and other professionals almost believing they are in the same room. One clear benefit is that these practitioners can deliver in-person consultations without the expense — in time and money — that travel would heretofore impose.

 

Said Charles Salameh, vice president, Network Business Solutions, Nortel, “…real-time access to information and expertise regardless of location can help improve patient care, reduce costs through greater efficiency, and improve overall productivity and effectiveness.”

 

Nortel’s Healthcare Telepresence (News - Alert) Solutions include standards-based telepresence and high-definition (HD) video conferencing from Polycom for telemedicine and clinical collaboration. They also include Nortel Multimedia Services like recording and archiving of clinical records and educational materials for re-use via the web and other media.

 

“The outstanding quality of experience of our telepresence and HD video collaboration offerings is ideal for healthcare applications, where seeing and hearing people and content in fine detail is critical,” said Ron Emerson (News - Alert), global director, healthcare markets, Polycom. “Polycom and Nortel are delivering these solutions in combination with managed services to provide a complete, end-to-end solution for healthcare organizations.”

 

Polycom (News - Alert) offers a number of telepresence and HD video collaboration solutions designed specifically for healthcare, including the mobile Polycom HDX Practitioner Cart, which enables physicians to examine and diagnose remotely-located patients in real-time.

 

The HDX Practitioner Cart delivers real-time interactive voice and video communications capabilities in circumstances when maximum mobility is required within minimal storage areas. Equipped with easy connectivity to medical peripheral devices for quality medical interactions, it is compatible with Polycom’s VSX series as well as the HDX series solutions which are designed to provide the high levels of visual, audio and content detail in a multimedia collaborative meeting environment.

 

The telepresence solution also includes a customizable version of Polycom’s RealPresence Experience (RPX) HD for the operating room or classroom.

 

These standards-based solutions are part of Polycom’s UltimateHD architecture, delivering HD video, HD voice, and simultaneous sharing of X-rays, microscope images, full-motion video and other HD multimedia content.

 

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