The Journal of mHealth Vol 1 Issue 3 (June 2014) | Page 26

The Value of Video in Modern Health and Social Care
Continued from page 21

time. Video is seen as one of the key
enablers to this policy, and the Trust has
developed a range of services to deliver
care via video and other digital channels.
For Dr Richard Pope of Airedale NHS
Trust this is all about individuals taking
ownership of their conditions and allowing them patient-centred care that can be
easily accessed. At present the various
Airedale services operate as a centralised digital triage, where highly-skilled
nurses are available for video consults
with managed patients. They then have
access to manage the care pathway by
which that patient either moves into the
secondary care system, or remains under
primary care in their own home. In terms
of work-flows this delivers immediacy, in
that a patient can be assessed via video
immediately to determine whether they
need hospital admission, additional
primary care assistance or simply selfadminstered help.
“Often simply the reassurance of knowing that the system is available is sufficient
to reduce many hospital admissions, particularly those related to anxiety” states
Dr Pope.
The longer-term aim of the Airedale
solution is to deliver connected care that
will allow patients to easily conference
with consultants or specialists, from all
over the UK and ultimately around the
world in order to gain the best possible
care package for the patient, without the

need for extensive referral or relocation
between care organisations.

Integration
For care providers often one of the biggest challenges when adopting a videoled service network is the difficulties of
deploying the system so that it integrates
with their current service packages. This
means that in order to be successful it is
vital for video solution providers to create, design and deploy a full service, to
ensure that there are agreements in place
so that there is someone to call should
problems arise, leaving the care providers free to deliver care, and not manage
IT systems. Allowing care providers to
develop strategic plans for the implementation of video across a range of
services without worrying about crossservice network problems.
Alasdair Morrison, of STAY, describes
how their experience of deploying video
across health and social care services has
been relatively easy in terms of the technical elements of the provision.
“Because v-connect initially developed
the system with the help and advice
of the NHS, it meant that any deployments in primary or secondary healthcare, where IT systems used the same
NHS standards, were relatively simple
to deploy as they easily integrated within
the current network architecture.”
Many solutions that are available to pro-

vide video services in healthcare work
in such a way that they can compromise
the integrity of the network security. By
requiring open connections or disabling
elements of a firewall, native systems can
be left vulnerable to intrusion, or suffer
from connection and reliability issues.
Knowing that the NHS and other public organisations represent such a large
part of the care provision network in
the UK it is imperative to offer a service
that can be effectively integrated without
compromising the network integrity of
the end user, whilst still delivering secure
deployment and fully encrypted video
and audio.
Airedale NHS Foundation Trust worked
extensively with Redembedded to help
deploy secure, stable and reliable services. Rebecca Malin, Deputy Director
of Strate w