The cry goes out: when the NBN comes, we will be able to do so much more in areas such as e-health, education and business services.
Senator Stephen Conroy - the Minister responsible for the introduction of the National Broadband Network (NBN) - was speaking at the Cisco Live conference at the end of March in Melbourne. According to Conroy, under the NBN, regional areas will have the same access as metropolitan areas, and that will transform peoples’ lives. A sick person in a remote Northern Territory emergency room can be diagnosed by video and given immediate, appropriate treatment by the clinician in the emergency room.
It’s not just Conroy talking up the benefits of telehealth or e-health. At the conference, Brendan Lovelock, Cisco Health Practice Manager, introduced three speakers who shared their direct, positive experiences with telehealth at the Centre of Health Innovation.
“Clinicians spend 27% of their time talking to other clinicians in hospitals to work out the treatment for patients. With telehealth they can spend more time with their patients,” Lovelock said.
Stephen Pascoe, CIO, NSW Health Cochlear Implant Centre, spoke about how the electrodes in a cochlear implant have to be mapped to make sure that patients get the optimum experience from the implant device.
With a growing client base, and 22 frequencies that must be mapped for each implant, Pascoe needed help to do all the mapping. He looked to telehealth as a solution, with one core criteria: patient mapping sessions needed to be as good as if a clinician was sitting with the patient.
The centre set up a wireless mobile mapping service, meaning patients do not have to travel to the centre for mapping sessions. The service is comparable to an in-person meeting, satisfying Pascoe’s requirements. Ultimately, it means the centre can service more remote patients.
“It is a great example of immersive telehealth,” Pascoe said.
David Ryan, CIO of the Grampians Rural Health Alliance, has a similarly positive perspective on telehealth.
“Telehealth means clinicians can spend more time with patients and patients can spend more time at home,” Ryan said.
This has also created opportunities in aged care, ambulatory and home-based care and can allow professionals to more easily meet and discuss things like wound management.
“The technology is so good now clinicians now accept technology as a tool of trade,” Ryan said.
Telehealth will make inroads into costs and start to bring equity between rural and metropolitan health services.
“The big challenge is the interoperability between systems,” said Ryan.
Gayle Boschert, Clever Health Project Manager, Grampians Rural Health Alliance, has had the task of educating clinicians and the public for the last four years. Time and patience has been the mainstay of the program, because of the magnitude of the cultural change.
Boschert hears people in the street saying, “We are going to see the doctor on the tele.”
Doctors are not paid yet for these consultations until telehealth numbers come in, but the payback for the doctors is that they do not have to travel so much. According to Boschert, when it comes to learning the ins and outs of telehealth systems, doctors needed to be shown and shown again, whereas nurses took it up more quickly as they realised how much it could help them.
Cathie Steele, General Manager, Centre for Health Innovation, said there is a gap between clinicians and technology.
“Interfaces must be simple. Don’t give me less than I have now. There is no support available in health so it must work first time. The NBN will help as there will be bigger pipes,” Steele said.
Pascoe said there has been nearly 100% uptake and the technology is nearly invisible. There has been a savings of $500,000 with an organisation of 50 people. It also means potential savings on travel costs.