Catholic Healthcare is using Microsoft’s holographic headset HoloLens to carry out telehealth appointments between residential care nurses and remote doctors. Source: iTnews.
The organisation has 41 devices – one in each of its aged care homes – that on-site nurses use to provide more detailed briefings about patients to their GPs and specialists.
The devices, which are integrated with Microsoft Teams, are also being used for family calls, with further uses around homecare and wound treatment being explored.
“In the past [staff] tried to use tablets and mobile phones,” Catholic Healthcare CIO Brett Reedman said.
“They’ve got their hands full trying to get the angle for things like a wound-care assessment, which would be very difficult for the GPs to see and focus on.”
Mr Reedman said the benefit of HoloLens “is that your hands are free; you have full visibility of the resident, and the doctor can see everything that you see”.
“The doctors love it. It’s completely brilliant high definition,” he added.
Mr Reedman said Catholic Healthcare is now working on integrating wound care software and internet of things (IoT) devices into the headset, which he sees as beneficial to the non-profit’s 7000 homecare patients.
Catholic Healthcare is developing a proof-of-concept for in-home usage with initial plans to use 20 HoloLens devices.
As an example, Mr Reedman said, a nurse could use the HoloLens headset to call a specialist at a hospital from an elderly patient’s home.
He added that Catholic Healthcare intends to expand the number of HoloLens devices at its residential homes.
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Catholic Healthcare brings in HoloLens for patient telehealth (By Eleanor Dickinson, ITNews)
