We’ve all been around long enough to know that no silver bullet will cure what ails healthcare, but there is one thing on which most everyone agrees. Collaboration is essential in healthcare and healthcare doesn’t do it well. This failure ranges from simple misdiagnosis to many “adverse events”, which according to the most recent HHS report accounts for 180,000 deaths per year! I don’t want to tell you what you already know but merely draw your attention to collaboration and a solution our company, Astound Technologies, has developed called the Virtual Specialist. It’s basically takes over where Unified Communications and Telemedicine fall short and is, by all accounts, a real game changer.
Patients, Caregivers and Doctors Connect 24/7
Walnut Creek, CA and Dallas, TX, February 8, 2012— Astound Technologies, LLC and Metro Doctors E-Access Clinics, LLC (MDEAC) today announced they have entered into an agreement to provide telemedicine services to hospitals, physician offices, skilled nursing centers, elder care facilities, and other health care facilities using Astound Technologies’ Virtual Specialist Network (VSN). Under the terms of the agreement, Astound Technologies will provide the applications to conduct live video consultations and MDEAC will provide physician services.
The Virtual Specialist’s unique ability is to quickly connect “care points”—where the patients are—and today’s highly mobile specialists for streamlined video collaboration using PCs, Microsoft’s Lync and the Internet. With a touch or a click, a physician can digitally appear in underserved areas or wherever there is internet service, saving time, eliminating travel, lowering costs and improving care.
“We’ve applied the principles of processing telephone calls to processing video collaboration calls with a focus on healthcare,” states Jack Gaither, Astound Technologies Founder and CEO. “We are very excited about partnering with MDEAC to offer the Virtual Specialist as a managed service to complement our enterprise version.”
“Managing more than one video call at a time between several patients and our physicians while maintaining appropriate security for each call presented a real challenge before we discovered the Virtual Specialist,” said Steve McReynolds, MDEAC chief executive officer. “Physicians wanted a system that mimicked a real, in-person doctor’s office visit.” The Virtual Specialist, with its answer—route and queue capability—solves the problem by allowing MDEAC staff to distribute telemedicine calls to a specific doctor’s queue based on the time of the patient’s arrival or the urgency of the complaint. “The ‘Virtual Specialist’ is the only thing I’ve seen that can do that.”
MDEAC physicians will be able to engage in a live video chat with any remote patient and the attending health care professional. In addition, they will have instant access to electronic health records, images and recordings from electronic medical instruments at the care point such as stethoscopes, otoscopes, and auxiliary cameras.
About Metro Doctors E-Access Clinics LLC
Metro Doctors E-Access Clinics LLC (MDEAC), based in Dallas, TX, provides patients and health care providers convenient, timely, affordable, and live visual access to board-certified physicians from a PC using the Virtual Specialist software and an internet connection. Patient care sites, staffed with a licensed healthcare professional who attends the patients and assists MDEAC physicians, include a minor urgent care clinic, a family practice clinic, and a disease management program. MDEAC physicians, over a live video chat, are able to establish a physician-patient relationship and, thus, provide the patient with an examination, a diagnosis, a plan of treatment, and a prescription order in Texas or wherever state medical licensing boards allow these same elements to be practiced during a telemedicine encounter.
For more information visit www.eaccessclinics.com.
About Astound Technologies, LLC
Astound Technologies is a Microsoft Certified Partner based in Walnut Creek, CA, specializing in virtual collaboration management software and a repeat winner of the Malcolm Baldrige Award. Its flagship eHealth solution, The Virtual Specialist, incorporates an automatic video call distributor (AVCD) software switch that routes video collaboration calls between any PC device operating Windows 7 enabling caregivers and physicians to appear where they’re needed― virtually and on demand. Astound is committed to improving care and slashing costs by making visual collaboration and telemedicine commonplace from daycare to eldercare and everywhere in between. For more information visit www.thevirtualspecialist.com
