The St. Louis-based network of hospitals and health facilities Mercy has integrated Vidyo's visual communications technology into its central TeleICU command center, supporting critical care telemedicine services like telestroke, telecardiology, and teleperinatal.
Over 450 Philips TelelCU monitored beds have been equipped with Vidyo, allowing Mercy’s critical care doctors and nurses to supervise and communicate with ICU patients, their families, and bedside healthcare staff from a central command center.
Mercy SafeWatch is the largest single-hub TeleICU in the United States, according to Vidyo. The system allows medical specialists to monitor critical patient data across 15 hospitals in four states while interacting and communicating with video by on-site medical teams and patients--a virtual expansion of patient care teams.
Over 450 Philips TelelCU monitored beds have been equipped with Vidyo, allowing Mercy’s critical care doctors and nurses to supervise and communicate with ICU patients, their families, and bedside healthcare staff from a central command center. According to Wendy Deibert, vice president of Telehealth Services at Mercy, the health system expects to expand the use of Vidyo to even more beds and applications. “With Vidyo, we are able to do many things a bedside physician can do, except physically touch a patient. We can see the entire room, from the drips to the ventilator panel, to how the patient looks. We can talk to the family, patient, or nurses in the room.”
“One of the biggest problems healthcare facilities are facing across the U.S., is that there isn’t adequate access to healthcare,” said Thomas Hale, executive medical director of Telehealth Services at Mercy. “With Vidyo, we are now capable of reaching those who need us the most, when they need us, wherever they are. Vidyo gives us the required high level of visual acuity, regardless of what kind of device you are communicating with and what level of bandwidth is available.”
According to Dr. Dale Alverson, medical director, Center for Telehealth and Cybermedicine Research, University of New Mexico, “Telemedicine is playing a bigger and bigger role in the care of patients the world over, and the innovation of new technologies and models of healthcare is central to the future of medicine. Technology should not only be about making things easier, but also about making things possible. Mercy’s SafeWatch demonstrates just how effective a healthcare system can be when you have great technology and tools to work with. Vidyo has been very responsive to the needs of the healthcare industry. They see what’s necessary for us to move into the future, and they provide exceptional solutions to get us there.”
Vidyo CEO and co-founder Ofer Shapiro commented, “The Mercy program is a testament to what can be accomplished when you put great technology into the hands of people with vision and a passion to improve the status quo. By using Vidyo, Mercy is revolutionizing healthcare and making programs such as SafeWatch possible with scalable, cost-effective, visual communication that leverages the public internet and existing general purpose IP networks. Healthcare practitioners are now able to rely on secure, encrypted remote doctor-patient and doctor-doctor interactions that are as close to face-to-face consultations as you can get.”
The VidyoWorks platform allows healthcare providers to deploy high definition (HD), low latency Vidyo for healthcare anywhere an examination or consultation needs to take place.
The VidyoWorks platform allows healthcare providers to deploy high definition (HD), low latency Vidyo for healthcare anywhere an examination or consultation needs to take place, from within medical facilities and patient homes, clinics, other hospitals or physician home offices. It is a complete, end-to-end solution with a variety of endpoint options, including VidyoRoom systems for conferences or auditorium events, desktop endpoints for doctors’ offices, simple-click, touchscreen options for patients at home, and customized endpoints for medical cart and bedside use in hospital emergency rooms, operating rooms or clinics. Vidyo offers natural, multipoint HD video communications that can be accessed from virtually any device and room size over basic Internet or wireless networks. Vidyo delivers HIPAA compliant encryption for its endpoints and is able to integrate with third party H.323 and SIP-based video conferencing systems. It easily integrates with established healthcare environments, supporting a variety of medical devices and interoperating with existing conferencing infrastructure.
Mercy is the sixth largest Catholic health care system in the United States and serves more than three million people annually. Mercy includes 33 acute care hospitals, four heart hospitals, two children’s hospitals, two rehab hospitals, and one orthopedic hospital, as well as nearly 700 clinic and outpatient facilities, 40,000 co-workers and 2,100 Mercy Clinic physicians in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Mercy also has outreach ministries in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
