Yorktel has adapted its cloud-based Univago enterprise video service for telemedicine. Yorktel Univago Healthcare Edition (HE) is a telemedicine video platform as a service that the managed services provider expects to remove historic barriers to telemedicine adoption, according to a press release.
Designed from the ground up explicitly for telemedicine applications, Univago HE has patent-pending technologies that ensure reliability and quality in every critical connection between patient and clinician, all with “touch-of-a-button” simplicity, according to Yorktel.
It’s an “all-inclusive” telemedicine video services platform that, Yorktel contends, “delivers the versatility, reliability and security vital to affecting widespread telemedicine adoption.”
Yorktel Univago HE includes:
- Fully managed subscribtion-based service
- Comprehensive monitoring
- Hardware
- Software
- License
- Intelligent analytics
- Clear reporting
Addressing Telemedicine’s Adoption Challenges
Yorktel expects Univago HE to spur adoption of telemedicine which offers obvious benefits, especially to rural communities. Frost & Sullivan principal analyst for transformational health Victor Camlek appears to agree that it can have an impact.
“Univago HE represents an important breakthrough in the challenge to make telemedicine a routine component of the provider workflow,” he says in Yorktel’s press release.
“Univago HE represents an important breakthrough in the challenge to make telemedicine a routine component of the provider workflow,” says Victor Camlek, Frost & Sullivan.
“It creates the foundation to build out a growing array of Telemedicine services that will serve the needs of providers to improve the outcomes for patients, regardless of the current staffing levels and in-house capabilities.”
The integration industry has long viewed telemedicine as an opportunity to address health care needs by extending its video conferencing expertise. However, it hasn’t played out as planned.
“The demands for telemedicine are growing, but the industry has not yet delivered at the rate we all expected a few years ago,” says Yorktel SVP of Healthcare, Peter McLain, in Yorktel’s press release.
“Clinician adoption and widespread utilization are held back by video conference room technology that is neither stable nor reliable enough for the clinical setting. The video technology at the core of telemedicine needs to just work 24/7, 365 days a year; it should fade into the background as clinicians focus on delivering patient care.”
So Yorktel Univago HE aims address specific conferencing needs of telemedicine applications.
“Every element of the Univago HE platform, from redundant data centers, to precision HD in-room systems, remote management tools and self-diagnostics, was designed and integrated specifically to support versatile telemedicine workflows with the reliability that is critical for patient care,” says Yorktel SVP of product Management, John Vitale, in the press release.
“Univago HE includes a library of APIs and SDKs that allow for broad interoperability between Skype for Business clients, WebRTC browsers and traditional video conferencing systems, as well as integration into many different clinical applications.”
More on Yorktel Univago HE from Yorktel’s press release:
Support for open standards and the inclusion of APIs and SDKs extend the value of the platform. Unlike the many closed, single-use systems in the marketplace, Univago HE can support multiple inpatient workflows such as patient monitoring in intensive care units (ICU), virtual rounding in acute units, stroke assessment, behavioral health, virtual sitter, interpreter services, and more.
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Eliminating failures and improving the serviceability of in-room systems are among the major advancements reflected in the Univago HE platform. For example, the in-room system for the ICU is modular and designed for years of uninterrupted performance. If a module ever needed replacement, the entire system would be back up and working within minutes, rather than multiple days typical of other solutions.
“Univago HE changes the entire service model, switching from reactive to proactive,” added McLain. “Most video deployments for telemedicine, such as carts and wall systems, are supported with break-fix models that can take days to resolve open issues. That is far too disruptive to patient care and is not scalable. With our proactive model and advanced self-diagnostics, we find and fix problems within minutes, typically before a clinician ever notices.”
Every aspect of Univago HE is private, secure and adheres to the highest standards. Univago HE is HIPAA-compliant (independently verified by Pivot Point Security), ISO 27001-certified, and hosted in hardened, SOC2-certified data centers to provide total patient privacy and security critical to any telemedicine application.
The company plans to release future iterations of Univago HE extending beyond the confines of hospital walls to support applications for long-term and home health care.
