Bupa Cromwell Hospital and Visionable have announced a partnership which will see the video collaboration platform used to treat patients based in the UK and abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic.

WHY IT MATTERS

The platform will connect doctors with their patients and also their peers, allowing them to safely and securely share patient records and hold international multi-disciplinary team meetings.

These meetings would previously have taken place face-to-face, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic they were taken online, with Visionable’s video platform to facilitate this. 

This will allow doctors to come together remotely to share best practice for patients, something which has been made challenging by the lockdown.

The healthcare-specific system is also being used to support virtual-consultations and remote rehabilitation, so patients can remain in the safety of their homes while still accessing medical care.

The platform will run virtual-consultations to enable London-based clinical teams to prepare patients who need to travel internationally for surgery and to deliver post-surgical care when they are back in their home countries.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Visionable has previous experience of supporting multi-disciplinary team meetings, virtual clinics, and connected healthcare services in the NHS.

With video-consultation uptake on the rise due to the COVID-19 crisis, other healthcare providers have offered similar virtual services. Earlier this month, digital healthcare company, Medicspot, partnered up with British supermarket, Asda, to offer in-store GP video-consultations. 

Last year, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS FT partnered with Tytocare to provide an all-in-one modular device and telehealth platform for remote medical examinations. 

ON THE RECORD

Philip Luce, Bupa Cromwell Hospital director, said: “We introduced Visionable for virtual patient appointments at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic so they could continue with their consultant appointments and adhere to social distancing and travel guidelines. Many of our consultants are now using the platform, with more seeing the benefits and joining each day."

“Although lockdown measures are beginning to ease, we know that a service like this is still going to be incredibly important for patients to access healthcare professionals safely and securely from their homes. The service is of particular benefit to our numerous international patients, enabling them to access London-based clinicians.”