Telstra to offer CSIRO's tele-health service

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 07 May 2006 19:20

Your IT - Home IT

Telstra has licensed the CSIRO's Virtual Critical Care Unit (ViCCU) tele-health technology and will bring it to market using its Government IP broadband network, connecting clinical specialists in major hospitals with staff and patients in country hospitals.
Dr Alex Zelinsky, director of CSIRO's ICT Centre, claimed that ViCCU's unique combination of multiple high quality video, audio and data streams allowed the specialist to see and talk to the patient, view scanned test results and instruct staff who were undertaking emergency medical examinations and treatments.

"ViCCU was developed in consultation with trauma specialists at Nepean Hospital and has been piloted by Sydney West Area Health Service over the past two years," Zelinsky said.

The system was designed to allow emergency patients at Blue Mountains Hospital to be treated locally rather than transferred to the metropolitan based Nepean Hospital, by giving patients at Katoomba the benefit of around-the-clock access to emergency specialists at Nepean Hospital. It also enables quick diagnosis for patients who do require transfer to metropolitan hospital for highly specialised care.

The development of ViCCU was funded by DICTA through the Centre for Networking Technology for the Information Economy (CeNTIE) project and SWAHS. Telstra plans to have a solution available to hospitals around Australia by late 2006.