In a partnership with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), Vidyo is adding its visual communications and collaboration technology to ANTHC’s statewide telehealth network (AFHCAN). Thousands of Alaska healthcare providers can now conduct real-time, HD video consultations and exams with hundreds of thousands of patients in more than 200 locations. The partnership integrates Vidyo’s APIs with AFHCAN’s tConsult software system.
Vidyo is adding its visual communications and collaboration technology to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium's statewide telehealth network.
“The implementation of Vidyo has given us the ability to change the way we provide health care in rural Alaska,” said Dr. Stewart Ferguson, CIO, ANTHC. “The AFHCAN Telehealth program has more than 1,500 active providers in its network at any one time, with an average of 500 new providers each year. There’s a daily challenge of how best to reach out and connect with more than 200 sites scattered over 37 autonomous organizations at the end of land lines, satellite links, microwave towers, sea cables—you name it. For our complex world, we needed something that just works, period. That’s Vidyo.”
ANTHC encompasses every city and village in the state of Alaska serving the majority of the state’s population through the AFHCAN telehealth program. Alaska is home to 700,000 people who are spread out over 660,000 square miles. This creates a challenging technology landscape that mixes satellite connectivity, high bandwidth, low bandwidth, high latency, as well as terrestrial infrastructure, which all make connectivity and communication huge challenges.
The tConsult system was deployed across Alaska over a decade ago, improving healthcare in remote areas of the state. The software has expanded beyond its initial purposes of improving primary care workflows, like specialty clinic referral; post-discharge continuity of care; and billing. Vidyo’s APIs combined with tConsult will provide cost-effective, scalable, high quality video over standard IP networks. Vidyo’s technology is interoperable across devices from Mac to PC, to smartphones and older, legacy equipment.
“We are extremely impressed by how well ANTHC tackles the challenge of serving such a geographically dispersed population with high-quality healthcare,” said Ofer Shapiro, Vidyo’s CEO and co-founder. “For ANTHC doctors to directly assess a remote patient’s condition in an emergency situation, they need a reliable system that offers high visual acuity over unpredictable network conditions. The unequalled level of quality, performance and reliability that Vidyo offers makes this possible. The integration of Vidyo with AFHCAN’s existing software solution creates an extraordinarily powerful tool for assisting physicians and ultimately helps save lives.”
For telemedicine applications, Vidyo delivers end-to-end encryption, provides HIPAA-compliant security, and easily integrates into existing healthcare environments with support for a variety of medical devices and interoperability with existing conferencing infrastructure.
