Evelina London Children's Hospital in London, U.K., treats 100,000 children each year. Six thousand of those children have heart problems, and the hospital performs 500 pediatric heart surgeries every year.
In partnership with Polycom, the hospital has improved its cardiology staff productivity by 94 percent by connecting cardiologists to the operating room (OR) using telemedicine.
When heart surgeries require a senior cardiologist's sign-off, surgeons used to page the cardiologist, who then had to scrub, change and go to the OR to view scan images. The whole process took about 90 minutes.
Polycom equipment allows surgeons to transmit or scan images to a number of monitors throughout the hospital. Instead of dropping all activity, scrubbing in and viewing scans in the OR, cardiologists can go to the nearest monitor and view the scans in real-time.
Cardiologists see patient scans in HD video quality, which is transmitted through a Polycom RealPresence Group 500 system. At the monitor, the cardiologist can use a Polycom video collaboration system to interact with the surgeons and discuss the patient's needs. The entire process takes about five minutes.
As a result of working with the Polycom telemedicine solution, Evelina London has gained 1,300 hours, or a 94-percent productivity increase. Cardiologists and surgeons can spend valuable time helping more children. The hospital also credits telemedicine with reclaiming time for nursing staff and support staff.
Polycom also partners with IBM to provide patient-doctor video communication and patient education. Using IBM analytics, collaborative video and a video-enabled care management tool, doctors can quickly analyze data that predicts which patients are most vulnerable to being readmitted after discharge.
The Polycom-IBM healthcare solution allows doctors and patients to collaborate over video for discharge planning, medication management, case management and follow-ups. By cutting readmission rates and improving patient outcomes, hospitals can significantly cut costs while meeting ACA or NHS criteria for quality of service.
Hospitals can also use video for patient education as well as for Continuing Medical Education (CME) programs and Grand Rounds webcasts.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
