Technology

Is telemedicine “as good” as a face-to-face patient visit?  Take a few cues from television and movie professionals to make sure!

In today's digital world, we've all become visual image connoisseurs.  Part of what we respond to is technical and part is artistic. It's largely the “artistic” portion in which meaning and emotion are created. 

As such, telemedicine professionals would be wise to pay attention to certain artistic aspects, when creating the telemedicine patient/provider encounter.

Beyond the 'good enough' technical aspects of the telemedicine encounter – available bandwidth, relatively clear and fluid video, and audio of an acceptable level – there is a higher-quality bar that we, as telemedicine professionals, must strive to reach, in order to be trusted and to overcome  objections that our viewers might have.  Often, these objections may even be subconscious on the viewer's part, but still come into play, and nothing is harder to resolve than an unconscious objection!

“Does anyone know of a USB microphone that can be daisy-chained?” “We held a camera ‘bake-off’ to see which ones perform best.” “We’re having trouble with inbound video calls coming through the firewall.” “How do you manage secure sign-ons for a conference room laptop?” “Does anyone have ideas for power-supply and cord management of a telehealth tablet at a remote site?”

These are the kinds of telehealth-related questions and issues that can take up hours of a technical person’s time when they’re doing all the research themselves. And often, IT people in a health-care setting are wearing a number of hats and can’t devote all their attention to telehealth issues and questions.

That’s why the members of the Northern Arizona Telemedicine Alliance (NATA) decided to hold monthly “Tech Talks” to share information and work together.