The government of Victoria in Australia recently began funding a new project which aims to improve access to care for people with cystic fibrosis that live in rural areas. The project will use a combination of technologies — WebRTC-enabled telehealth, remote monitoring devices and a shared electronic health record — to do so.
Funded by the Victorian government's Broadband Enabled Innovation Program and the Victorian Department of Health, the Regional Cystic Fibrosis e-Health & Telemonitoring Program is being carried out by Monash University.
The project will allow doctors to remotely monitor patients and deliver services online, while patients will be able to view care plans and radiology images from home. The key element of the project, however, is allowing doctors and patients to engage in video consultations based on WebRTC technology. This means patients won't need to download any specialized chat software, rather participating in consultations from any WebRTC-enabled browser.
As a supplement to this, patients will have access to a portal that allows them to participate in treatment programs, with all the data collected by remote monitoring devices integrated into a shared EHR.
“Telemedicine is an opportunity to provided better access, improved monitoring and prolonged treatment courses for many patients who would otherwise be dependent on hospital care,” said John Wilson, project leader and professor at Monash University's Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, in a statement. “The cutting-edge of telemedicine lies in the ability to monitor many conditions in the home environment using high-speed broadband. The Monash team has accomplished this by providing healthcare solutions suitable for implementation within the Australian community.”
The WebRTC technology being used in the program is to be enabled by video consultation specialist Attend Anywhere. According to the company's managing director, Chris Ryan, WebRTC is a major game-changer for the telehealth industry and other major players in Australia, such as Healthdirect Australia, have also recognized this and are looking to take advantage of the technology.
Indeed, as WebRTC requires no special plug-ins and runs straight from popular browsers such as Chrome and Firefox, it is the perfect choice for video enablement in telehealth and other industries.
Edited by
Braden Becker
