Polycom and the International Virtual e-Hospital (IVeH)
have partnered on a new model that enables medical professionals to collaborate
via video and share their expertise across 35 healthcare and academic
institutions globally, thanks to Polycom video collaboration program that has
helped rebuild Kosovo’s medical system.
The model is now being deployed more broadly in new
regions outside the Balkans including Africa, the Middle East, South Eastern
Europe, and South America.
The International Virtual e-Hospital (IVeH) was
established in 2001 by Rifat Latifi to create sustainable telemedicine and
e-health programs around the world and to rebuild medical systems in developing
countries.
Launched as the Telemedicine Program of Kosovo (TPK), the
program has since connected seven Kosovan hospitals via telemedicine and
provided access to an electronic medical library for distance learning with
video facilities in Albania, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy,
Norway, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, UK, and the U.S.
Each telemedicine center in Kosovo contains video
collaboration rooms, tele-consultation rooms, and telemedicine training rooms,
as well as mobile telepresence units in patient rooms which results in better
patient care and improved trainings and resources for hospital physicians and
staff.
The video rooms are equipped with a Polycom
high-definition room video collaboration system supported by a central Polycom®
RSS 2000 video recording and streaming solution. The RSS 2000 solution is a
centralized server used by each center for recording, streaming, and archiving
multimedia conferences and training sessions.
This saves time and resources while extending
communication and enabling knowledge-sharing throughout Kosovo and
international medical communities.
“The Polycom video conferencing solution helps us
quickly share knowledge, train the next generation of medical providers, and
conduct consultations with worldwide experts to ultimately improve patient
care,” said Latifi, founder, IVeH.
“Thanks to the access to the World Health
Organization’s (WHO) medical library as well as experts around the world,
regional telemedicine centers are now able to develop their own educational
programs based on this vast resource; this electronic library logged
approximately 54,000 visits within the first three years of operation. The
telemedicine centers provide us with a timely, reliable, and accessible way to
bring content, experts, and organizations together in a more productive and
cost-efficient way,” Latifi added.
Polycom recently announced the appointment
of Navin Mehta as senior vice president of Global Services. Mehta will be
responsible for driving Polycom’s global services strategy, including the
customer support function, and expanding its portfolio of service offerings to
provide customers with complete UC solutions.
By Telecomlead.com Team
[email protected]
