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The hospital provides round the clock remote monitoring between the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and a High Dependency Paediatric Unit on the city outskirts via video.
The consultants at the PICU are responsible for providing ongoing support to children admitted to the High Dependency Paediatric Unit at the Booth Hall Hospital, six miles away. Previously when specialist support was required, or a child's condition deteriorated a PICU doctor would be required to drive across Manchester to Booth Hall. Now staff within the PICU can simply pick up the AP-100 and have an instantaneous visual assessment of any patient at the remote unit.
The AP-100 provides very high quality video and audio connections utilising the hospital's existing Internet Protocol (IP) network. It also connects to a document image camera and digital video camera allowing remote access to x-rays, patient monitoring devices and written observation data and is also able to send high quality video pictures of the patient.
Consultation time is not shortened by using the video phone, nor does it replace the need for direct one-to-one care, but it takes less time to initiate the contact and prevents unnecessary travel between the units. Doctors are more able to seek advice and support as to whether a child needs to be transferred to intensive care, as this is now easily available at the end of the video phone. If specialists had to travel each time to make an assessment, it would take longer to gain the necessary first hand clinical information and the PICU staff would be on site much longer.
Significantly, the improved access via the AP-100 to the clinical patient information produced by hospital monitoring equipment enables medical staff to make more accurate diagnosis and prescribe more appropriate treatment and advice. Every minute saved in travel time is now being spent on direct patient care.
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