"So the kid might be in daycare. The parent is at work. The nurse connects to the system. Let's say the doctor is on the golf course. He gets a call. But he doesn't want to leave. So he pulls out a smartphone. Three different people in three different places can join the collaboration."
That scenario was offered by Shri Boppana, vice president of business development for healthcare at Richardson, Texas-based mobile communications firm Damaka, during the first annual Mobile Health Expo last October in Las Vegas.
Using an iPhone, iPad, laptop and Android, he and Damaka co-founder and CTO Satish Gundabathula presented a live demonstration of the firm's new product: What's being billed as the healthcare industry's first multi-party video conferencing technology for mobile platforms.
Damaka specializes in bringing unified communications and collaboration to mobile devices. Device-agnostic, its Amadeo technology enables video conferences for as many as four participants on Android, iPad, iPhone, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices.
The company could soon be a player in a burgeoning market, according to a recent Frost & Sullivan report, which noted that "reduced prices and improved quality are boosting the adoption of telemedicine videoconferencing systems" and concluding that healthcare is "ripe for videoconferencing."
The report, "Visual Collaboration Applications in Healthcare," highlighted new cost realities that should translate into new "opportunities for videoconferencing service providers as they continue to address a market that remains highly under-penetrated."
Frost & Sullivan research analyst Iwona Petruczynik reported that the past few years have seen a significant reduction in equipment prices and big improvements in endpoint functionality – video quality, especially.
Of course, the big draw of telemedicine such as video conferencing is extending the geographic reach of healthcare while at the same time, in many cases, reducing the cost of delivery.
Still, Petruczynik pointed out, obstacles remain – most notably resistance from traditional care facilities unfamiliar with the technology and from medical staff afraid of being replaced by new and more efficient practices.
But while "concerns related to the integration of telemedicine with electronic medical records and resolving system interoperability issues" are legitimate, "there exists sizable potential for growth," the report concluded.
In Las Vegas, Boppana screened a short video showing how an emergency EMT, in an ambulance with a patient in distress, could use Damaka's technology to conference with doctors and nurses waiting in the trauma center, who "can look at the traditional diagnostics plus the video – the video makes the difference."
In addition to multi-party video conferencing and the ability to toggle between front and rear cameras on Android-based devices during a video conference, the Amadeo solution includes features such as app and desktop sharing with voice, editing, zooming and panning capabilities.
It also features technology allowing the transfer of in-progress sessions to and from multiple devices – from a laptop to an iPhone, for example, if a doctor wanted to continue a video conference but needed to leave his or her office.
Many companies are making waves with novel uses of a technology that just a decade or so ago seemed in the realm of sci-fi.
American Well, the Boston-based telehealth provider, enables a patient to link up from anywhere to a video chat with a primary care provider or a specialist via its online care system. In December, the firm announced a more robust partnership with IBM to bolster the security of patient information that's exchanged alongside its two-way video-conferencing.
Meanwhile, Stat Doctors, a service of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Stat Health Services, was launched in November as a health benefit for employees of Scottsdale Healthcare hospital, the city's largest employer. Stat Doctors uses proprietary technologies such as video conferencing to "provide convenient access to quality healthcare, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Alan C. Roga, MD, chairman and CEO of Stat Health.
Expect to see many more such services – both wired and wireless – in the coming years as doctors and patients get more comfortable with the dynamic of videoconferencing and the technology simultaneously advances and simplifies.
"Video conferencing," said Francis Sideco, principal analyst at El Segundo, Calif.-based iSuppli, "has, in the past, been limited by air interface bandwidth and latency, adoption of multiple cameras, handset processing capability and cross-device interoperability." Technologies such as Damaka's, he said, which "engage in live multi-party video conferencing sessions with users on any device, regardless of operating system or network, will be of great interest to the rapidly growing number of smartphone users."