Australia’s Royal District Nursing Service (RDNS), which is testing a telehealth service (=telemedicine), won the Outstanding ICT Innovation award in the Asia Pacific Eldercare Innovation Awards 2013, part of the 4th Ageing Asia Investment Forum in Singapore. Nurse virtual visits were demonstrated between ‘patient’ Singapore’s Senior Minister of State, Mr. Chan Chun Sing, and RDNS nurse Amanda Murray in Melbourne, checking his blood pressure and ‘medication’. The ‘Healthy, Happy and at Home’ project over the past two years was developed by the RDNS with the Victorian State Government under its Broadband Enabled Innovation Program (BEIP); participating partners are Telstra, Healthe Tech (using the original Intel Health Guide) and La Trobe University. RDNS telehealth wins international ICT award (ITWire), Asia Today Video (3:38) Hat tip to reader George Margelis of Care Innovations Australia.
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The key to the success of this project was the early engagement with the clinicians from RDNS to determine what their pain points were, what simple interventions could make a difference to the lives of their patients, and then focus on that and not feel obligated to use all the functionality of the available hardware just because they had it.
They are evolving their solution, but they are focusing on clinical solution, not technical solutions to problems that appear important on paper but in reality are not an issue.