Telemedicine in Schools: Promoting Health (and Mental Health)

Telemedicine might be coming to a school near you in the future!

The use of a Telemedicine cart, made by Rubbermaid, will be piloted in one of the Union County Public Schools soon. In the article below,  the school district's superintendent was quoted as saying that she hopes the technology can also be used to tackle the problem of mental health:

Presbyterian, UCPS partner to put Telemedicine in schools
Carolyn Steeves, The Enquirer Journal, 1/9/13 


According to information from the Rubbermaid Healthcare Telemedicine website, the cart supports high definition video teleconferencing, a plug and play I/O panel, platform computing, and is white board capable. The touchscreen has annotation capabilities.  

For more information, view the following video and also see the Rubbermaid Telemedicine Resources site.



Here's the promotional information from the Rubbermaid website:

HD Video, Touch-Screen Apps, & Shared Content 

"The Rubbermaid Telemedicine Cart combines full computing capabilities with HD video conferencing into one, easy-to-use, mobile point-of-care clinical platform. Its clean, slim line design and small footprint provide access into the smallest and busiest clinical settings. Its multi-touch interface, simple integration, and superior maneuverability streamlines work flow and creates high adoption rates by staff members."

 "Each Telemedicine Cart comes equipped with a 720p HD video camera, upgradable to 1080p HD video. It also provides computing access to any software or web-based application, including electronic medical records and PACS imaging systems. It can be outfitted with any number of optional medical devices (both analog and digital) that can be shared through the computer or video conferencing equipment or both. The Telemedicine Cart supports digital input through DVI and HDMI as well as legacy inputs such as VGA, S-Video, and composite video. In addition, it is a fully portable platform that runs for two hours via built-in battery power and can be quickly and easily wheeled from room to room, requiring only a standard, high speed internet connection (wired or wireless) to initiate an HD video conference."

Below is a screen shot of telemedicine images from a Google search:

RELATED
Rubbermaid Healthcare Telemedicine Resources (Videos, Whitepapers, News)
Rubbermaid Healthcare Telemedicine
FCC Gives Telehealth $400M Boost
Mary Mosquera, Healthcare IT News, 1/10/13

Teliris InterAct TouchTable and TouchWall: Immersive Collaboration & Telepresence; DVE's Holographic Tele-Immersion Room

A few years ago I took a class about virtual reality and how it can be used in education and training. One of the topics we covered was telepresence. One of the companies I looked at was Teliris.

According to a whitepaper on the Teliris website, "Business Value of Telepresence", by S. Ann Earon, "Telepresence is what videoconferencing was meant to be: reliable, highly interactive, easy to operate, resulting in a natural meeting with transparent technology and an emphasis on human factors."

Teleris now offers something they call Immersive Collaboration, which involves the use of surface computing that supports document and multimedia content sharing across locations, as if all of the group members are in the same room


Watch the demonstration of the Teliris Collaboration Touch Table in a telepresence meeting. In the video clip below, the narrator shares content from a local Teliris Collaboration Touch Table to a remote meeting participant who is at another table.

"Touch to Telepresence"

Business Holograms!
DVE (Digital Video Enterprises) developed a Tele-Immersion room that uses Cristie Digital Systems Mirage HD 3D projectors to create holographic images of remotely located meeting participants:

DVE Telepresence: An Introduction (A plug from DVE, but informative.)

DVE Portable Virtual Presentation -A Volumetric 3D image from a projector hidden from the audience's view:

This system can display 3D images on the stage, and supports 2-way interactive HD feeds.

The above examples demonstrate how newer technologies, including table-top surfaces, can be used for collaborative business meetings. I can envision this technology used for medical education, medical consultations, and collaboration between artists and musicians.

When the price comes down, perhaps we will have these systems in our family rooms!