Opinion: Teleconferencing

Time for the NHS to recognise the benefits of videoconferencing

Technology and medicine have gone hand in hand for centuries and have lead to the development of state-of-the-art treatment. But now it’s entering a new dimension. Telehealthcare is a term that’s been bounded about for years, but only now is it realising its true potential, with video communication playing an increasing part due to improved quality, ease of use and interoperability.

Indeed, there’s even talk now that telerobotics will be the future of healthcare, providing a way for doctors to interact with patients even if they are home in bed; and surgical procedures being recorded and added to a patient’s medical record.

Videoconferencing has three key applications within healthcare today: clinical, training and administration. If every hospital and trust in the UK adopted videoconferencing it would revolutionise the way the NHS operates; improving productivity, accelerating decision making and scaling knowledge. Companies in the private sector use videoconferencing all the time to achieve this, so why shouldn't doctors and their colleagues?

Some have already recognised the benefits that videoconferencing can bring in both improving patient care and meeting government targets. Take cancer care for example. The government stipulates that there should be no more than two months between an urgent GP referral and a patient starting treatment. Before treatment can begin, the multi-disciplinary team (MDT), consisting of specialist doctors, surgeons, nurses and other health professionals, must meet to discuss the patient’s case and appropriate treatment.

The eight-week target from diagnosis to treatment would be impossible to achieve were it not for videoconferencing, as these staff are often based at different sites and simply do not have the time to travel. By using videoconferencing, targets can be met and the NHS reduces its carbon footprint through travel cuts.

In some instances, clinical use of videoconferencing has been adopted almost accidentally. Chris Lilley, a consultant at Glasgow Royal Infirmary came up with the idea to use videoconferencing already being used by hospital staff to communicate with one another, to connect mothers who have had to be separated from their newborns due to medical complications. Dubbed ‘Babycams’, these video endpoints help mother and baby to bond, and provide reassurance to the women who are often in a different hospital and wouldn’t otherwise be able to see their child.

Training is also an area in which video communications has a role to play. Take endoscopy as an example. At the time training was introduced, the government didn’t realise how popular endoscopy was going to be. Consequently, places on training courses were limited as the specialists simply did not have to the time to teach the number of students applying to study.

With videoconferencing in place, it allows the specialist to physically stay in his or her own hospital but still supervise procedures being carried out by trainees in another hospital. They simply dial in to the operation taking place via a desktop video unit. Similarly, in surgery, the ability to connect to other experts in real-time for their advice is helping to scale knowledge within the NHS.

Improved network capacity, including NHS England and Scotland's N3 network, combined with better video coding, has increased the quality of video calls in the NHS, making this possible. The result of this is two fold: not only can more students benefit from expert guidance but the specialist’s time is freed up from not having to travel, enabling him or her to be more productive.

It is not just specialist medical staff who are benefiting from reduced travel either. Clerical staff across the NHS are using videoconferencing to replace travel to meetings. In fact, it is these administrative meetings where the biggest cost saving is being made: if five people all travel to one hospital within their region for a meeting, and it takes them on average an hour to travel both there and back, that equates to 10 hours of unproductive time. The problem is exasperated in rural areas too, where it may take even longer to travel between hospital locations.

Videoconferencing not only enables trusts to cut costs but to arrange shorter, more regular meetings that in turn helps to improve communication and collaboration between hospitals and NHS organisations.

Furthermore, improved video quality means documentation, such as medical records and scans, can easily be shared between staff and organisations, quickly and safely, again helping to reduce costs by removing the need to courier the documents. For instance, before one particular NHS trust had videoconferencing capabilities, it would send neonatal scans burned onto CD via a taxi from one hospital to another.  Videoconferencing takes this cost out of the equation altogether.

Hospitals and organisations implementing videoconferencing systems usually experience return on investment within just six months. So, if it enables improved patient care and staff training, and better work-life balance for staff as a result of reduced time spent travelling, why isn’t it in every hospital and organisation in the NHS?

The answer is that the NHS struggles with innovation. Whilst the benefits of video communication are being realised — and in cases like Babycam, driven — on the ward floor, senior management is often disconnected and unwilling to fund what can be seen as risky experimental projects. Unfortunately, charitable funding is the norm and not the exception in the NHS.

What is needed is an equivalent of NICE for the use of technology within the NHS; a governing board that is able to take a strategic view and make the benefits and uses of technology known on a national level.

Despite the fact that in Scotland the government commissioned a paper that looked into the use of technology in healthcare, and from that the Scottish Centre for Telehealth was born, there is no one person or organisation taking the same initiative in England. Until this happens, it is companies like Tandberg, not government that are educating the likes of MDTs on videoconferencing and how it can help.

Steve Woollett, Head of Public Sector Business, Tandberg.

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