Smart Health Video Consultation is one of the three focus areas of Smart Health Telehealth, along with Smart Health Vital Signs Monitoring (VSM), and Smart Health TeleRehab (TR). These initiatives are guided by Singapore’s National Telemedicine Guidelines and are developed on common IT infrastructure and standards.
How It Works
Patients use their already owned mobile device or laptop with a webcam to connect with their care team over the Internet and 3G/4G/Long-Term Evolution (LTE) mobile networks. An email or SMS link for the tele-consultation sessions is sent to patients by their healthcare team.
The key capabilities of the VC platform include enabling multi-party high definition (HD) video and audio quality, as well as document sharing and annotation to facilitate interaction between patients and their healthcare team. The HD quality of each video consultation session allows the clinician to see important details as he would in a face-to-face consultation.
Every virtual session uses end-to-end encryption, and is protected based on banking industry standards and proven technologies. Patients’ personal details are also not stored when a video appointment is scheduled, thus ensuring a safe and secure platform for use.
Benefits
With consultation sessions done remotely from the comfort of their homes, patients save hours of waiting time in long queues and save expenses travelling to the hospitals. Through video communication, patients are connected to their healthcare team for remote consultation sessions, such as patient assessment and diagnosis, medical counseling and therapy sessions, and receive timely and appropriate care.
The healthcare team can remotely link up with other care providers to discuss patients’ medical needs and resolve emergency medical issues that require speedy decisions with accurate information, thus translating the benefits of remote care directly to patients.
The platform saves the healthcare team time from travelling to other institutions or patients’ homes where appropriate, enhancing their productivity. The team is able to care for more patients in the time saved from travelling. For example, healthcare staff at nursing homes now do not need to accompany patients to the hospitals for their consultations. This ensures that nursing homes will not be short of manpower during that period.
Where It Is Available
Smart Health Video Consultation platform has been implemented at the following institutions, along with 31 community care partners:
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Changi General Hospital
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Institute of Mental Health
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Khoo Teck Puat Hospital
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KK Women's and Children's Hospital
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National University Hospital
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Singapore General Hospital
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SingHealth Polyclinics
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Sengkang General Hospital
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Tan Tock Seng Hospital
The platform will soon be available at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, Singapore National Eye Centre, National Neuroscience Institute, National Healthcare Group Polyclinics.
