Verizon is working with a hospital in New Jersey to build a collaboration service that allows specialists to conduct video consultations via mobile devices, according to a report from Telephony. The report did not name the hospital the service provider is working with:
"Also coming are even more mobile capabilities, including taking video collaboration down to the mobile device. For instance, Verizon is already working with a hospital in New Jersey, [Verizon's managing principle for healthcare, Nancy] Green said, that is building a collaboration service with mobile endpoints, allowing specialists to do consultations from almost anywhere."
Verizon offers video consultations for applications like "tele-stroke" which allows physicians to review patients' cases via live video to determine whether they should wait for a doctor to visit or be rush to emergency care. Green believes these services will become much more effective one remote patient monitoring of vitals and video collaboration applications come into the mix, too.
Of course, Verizon sees rural America as a key market for telehealth solutions: Green said that 10 percent of U.S. physicians practice in rural areas and 25 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural areas. And one key to enabling more telehealth applications, according to Green, is moving these services into the cloud:
"Over the next year, Verizon Connected Health Care will roll out additional solutions, but also focus on moving more of its services and capabilities into the network 'cloud' – offering them as true managed services versus applications that run on the customer premises, Green said. In particular, hospitals have a lot to gain by better connecting with other hospitals via wide area links, but that brings up questions of security and privacy."
