Video chat became an integral part of medicine during the coronavirus crisis.
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You cannot enter St. Luke’s University Health Network intensive care units because of concerns about spreading the novel Corona virus. But if you did, you would see something new in the middle of the beds, medical devices and tubing. It is a device that is running the Microsoft Teams software.
In the past few months, like so many of us, the hospital network has turned to technology Bridging personal communications lost to the corona virus threat. The virus that was designated as a World Health Organization pandemic last monthhas caused 2 million confirmed cases worldwide. Governments Have imposed lockshoping to slow the spread of the virus and give hospitals time to treat the victims.
St. Luke’s, also called SLUHN, has little to do with tele-health before the crisis. The most notable initiative was a video chat device that was kept in the emergency room to digitally take doctors to other parts of the hospital to the bed of suspected stroke patients. With the corona virus, doctors had to find new ways to treat patients without having to constantly take protective equipment off and on.
“We searched our network for devices,” he said Dr. James Balshi, the chief medical information officer for SLUHN and a vascular surgeon. Around 100 devices can now be brought to the intensive care unit and some other beds. Microsoft’s video chat software, Teams, enables patients to communicate with doctors regardless of whether they are in the room or not. “A phone is better than nothing, but it doesn’t come close to looking at someone and seeing their facial expressions – it’s one of the most powerful parts of it.”
Microsoft provided SLUHN to speak to CNET as part of a Series of blog posts and videos that are produced about how companies are using their software in this crisis. These include the L’Oréal cosmetics brand, which relied on video chat software to help the company customize its factories around the world To produce hand disinfectants.
Our sudden trust in video chat made apps like Zoom, Cisco’s WebEx, Apple’s FaceTime, Google’s Duo, Houseparty and Microsoft’s Skype – everyday parts of people’s lives. For teams in particular, this means staff growth of more than 40% with his product in the past few months.
This switch to video chat has brought with it its own challenges. In some cases, outsiders sign up for public video chats for schools or governments and begin Spreading pornography or racist images. In other cases, experts raise concerns about possible security problems.
Still, it seems that our wider use of video chat will likely be after the crisis has calmed down. For SLUHN, the positive reception by even reluctant doctors helped to clarify this case, as well as Microsoft’s compliance with privacy laws.
SLUHN encountered bumps. Doctors have learned that it is more difficult for some people, especially Parkinson’s patients and the elderly, to download the app and, for example, to set it up for their virtual doctor visits.
A doctor helps a patient use his phone.
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“Not everyone has the son or daughter who can come and set you up,” said Balshi. It is also another app that patients need to deal with, in addition to managing theirs electronic patient records.
Still, Balshi sees promises. The hospital network also uses team video chat for doctor visits. It is now about 3,000 a day. That’s half of what hospitals normally offer, Balshi said, but still almost none before the crisis started.
“The reluctance and uncertainty about it are gone,” he said. “Almost every provider in our network now has contact with it and said: ‘Hey, we could do that and it works.’
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