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(CNN Business) – Video calls have been, for many, key to staying in touch with friends, family and coworkers, while the coronavirus forces people to stay apart. The technology is now being used to connect healthcare providers and patients in hospitals.
Northwell Health, a New York healthcare system, is expanding a program to equip coronavirus patient rooms with Amazon Echo Shows, bi-directional video calling devices that allow providers to consult patients on video, rather than video. personally. The tool helps reduce vendor exposure to the virus. It could also reduce the use of vital personal protective equipment at a time when the national stock of protective equipment has been largely depleted.
Northwell is the largest healthcare provider in New York State, which has been the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. The virus has now infected nearly 760,000 Americans, and healthcare workers are especially at risk.
The video chat tool is just one of a series of healthcare applications for technology that has emerged or grown in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump administration expanded telemedicine benefits to Medicare patients. Apple and Google are working on an ambitious plan to use their technology to track the spread of the coronavirus, considered a key step in containing the spread of the pandemic.
Other hospitals have also found similar uses for video calling tools. Healthcare workers at Massachusetts General Hospital connected iPads to IV poles to create makeshift video portals to communicate with patients in isolation rooms, Lee Schwamm, vice president of virtual care for Mass General Partners HealthCare, said last month.
At North Shore University Hospital on Long Island, the Northwell Health facility that has been testing the technology, video calling devices are helping doctors “maintain a human connection with their patients,” said Al Caligiuri, North Shore Director of Clinical Information.
“We can communicate with them, we can answer questions, we can decrease foot traffic in the room and minimize exposure to staff and reduce the use of personal protective equipment over time,” said Caligiuri.
Patients with coronavirus have the devices, equipped with a screen, front camera, and microphone, sitting on a nightstand in their hospital room. When physicians or other providers wish to speak, they can initiate an “admission” from their own device in another room, allowing them to appear on the patient’s screen.
The tool does not require patients to press any buttons or interact with devices other than looking at the camera and responding, something the hospital considered when thinking about what would be easy to use for very sick and weak patients.
In person, physical interactions between providers and patients are still necessary for examinations and treatments. But Caligiuri said the tool is helping with other types of exchanges, such as asking patients about their health history or how they feel after receiving a medication. The hospital has configured the devices to comply with federal telemedicine guidelines on privacy and data protection practices, Caligiuri said.
While North Shore University Hospital was the first to test the technology, Northwell has deployed around 2,800 devices in more than a dozen of its facilities in recent weeks and plans to further expand the use of the technology.
Some of the devices were provided by Amazon as part of a larger donation of devices worth $ 5 million to hospitals, schools, and other organizations. The hospital system bought additional echo shows as the use of the technology expands, Caligiuri said.
Before the coronavirus arrived, Northwell had an existing partnership with Amazon to bring information to patients through Alexa devices in their homes.
Caligiuri said patients have responded positively to video technology, especially at a time when most coronavirus patients cannot receive visitors. And he said the hospital is already thinking of ways to continue using the technology even after the coronavirus outbreak subsides.
“The beauty of this is … around that human connection,” Caligiuri said. “(The patients) are lying in a room with uncertainty in the future. Just having the ability to see the faces of the doctors, having that interaction. I think it has really been one of the main advantages ”.
