Solutions

What service you want to provide, and perhaps opportunities or constraints in your current situation, will inform decisions you need to make about an appropriate Video Conferencing solution for Telehealth Consultations.

As with any endeavour, there are many paths to fulfilment. Adopting the recommendations put forward by DoHA reduces the scope of appropriate solutions but answering a few select questions can help guide you more quickly to a valid choice.

• What type of Video consultations will I provide?
  • General
  • Complex Management or Diagnostic

•  What type of accommodation do I plan to use for these consultations?
  • Existing Specialist/GP rooms
  • Special purpose video consulting room

 

•  Do I have access to a high speed broadband internet service?
  • Yes. I already have or can upgrade to a suitable high speed service.
  • No. I am limited to standard ADSL 2 connection which does not always provide the service expected. 

•  What is the expected volume of consultations and what method will I use to manage connecting to the appointments?
  • Due to my location I already service a lot of rural regional patients and I see demand for this service already.
  • I would use this only occasionally as most of my patients are local or can be serviced by local specialist.

•  How many Specialists/GPs will I normally refer to/from and how will they become Telehealth Enabled?
  • I work with a limited number of providers and we can agree on how to connect.
  • I could be working with anyone and will need to be able to work with any other Telehealth Enabled provider.

 

• Am I working  an Aged Care Facility that needs to be able to provide:
  • Infirm residents access from their beds
  • Private access in dedicated Consultation Rooms

 

• Am I working in a large health provider organization such as a Hospital that needs to enable specialists on staff to be able to do follow-up appointments via video with rural or regional patients?
  • We have an existing ICT department that would prefer to host video conferencing services rather than outsource
  • We have a policy that mandates outsourcing of hosted services
  • We have existing VC infrastructure which works within our hospitals and own networks, which we want to continue to leverage

Solution Types

Common Solution Characteristics

Connectivity

In order to achieve broad based interoperation it is a given that all solutions involve carriage of Video traffic over IP network connected systems. These connections may be purely Internet or have private links within or between organizations and providers.

Presentation

Dual Displays are required to allow view of people as well as graphical or text content which may be relevant to the consultation.

Audio Peripherals

Hardware Echo Cancellation capability is advised for all solutions with Peripheral specifications depending on room size and seating layouts.