Category: Health & Performance

Plasma blast or plasma pen is an anti-ageing treatment in which the skin is cauterized via electrosurgery, a widely used surgical technology that uses a

What about the current equipment in our meeting rooms?
MDT and Meeting rooms mostly still have a different technology which, on the surface, is not compatible with Microsoft Teams as they use what is known as “standards based” protocols, whereas Microsoft use a proprietary protocol. This means if the organisation wants to use Microsoft Teams across their existing endpoint estate, action needs to be taken to ensure these devices are compatible with Teams.

So, what can we do?
There is the obvious option of replacing the kit in the room, however this is not the easiest route to take and these devices may have only just been purchased and may work extremely well in all other scenarios but just aren’t compatible with Teams. If this is the option you want to take, we can guide you through this process and design and install a solution fit for purpose. However, we think there’s a better option.

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) have utilised the medio.link secure video conferencing platform to hold meetings with stakeholders from NHS sites.
The RCP, a leading health organisation which aims to improve patient care and prevent disease worldwide, represents 37,000 doctors globally and needed a reliable video platform after struggling to hold virtual meetings which were of a consistent quality.
Ben Pain, Head of Audio-visual, Technical and Media Services at RCP, describes the organisations issues before they implemented medio.link. “We were using a variety of video platforms at the RCP, but we struggled with delivering calls of a consistent quality with stakeholders, who were joining us from their places of work. This was largely because the majority of our stakeholders work within the NHS and the approach to video calling technology and network security differs at each trust.”
As a result of the issues with reliability, the RCP looked for a new video conferencing platform. “Our key requirement was interoperability,” says Ben. “We chose medio.link because we feel it provides the most reliable way for us to collaborate with our family of clinicians and medical professionals, regardless of the preferred technology within their local place of work.”

The medio.link Platform
medio.link is a secure, reliable video conferencing platform designed specifically for the NHS and healthcare. The service is the most secure video calling platform in UK healthcare, boasting HSCN/N3 compliance and 99.999% reliability.
“We have found medio.link easy to use, because it is well designed and integrates easily with Skype for Business,” says Ben. “It’s very popular with our staff because it’s so reliable.”
“Previously, connecting stakeholders from different NHS sites was arduous and often frustrating work, but medio.link saves us time. The reliability of medio means our stakeholders feel more confident contributing virtually, which means less time away from their place of work,” says Ben.
“The team at Involve have been very helpful and have been able to accommodate some much larger meetings than we would usually hold. We’ve had up to 60 doctors on one call using medio.link. Involve and medio.link are ideal for any organisation for who, interoperability and simple functionality is the priority. Whether it’s SIP, IP, Skype, WebRTC, telephone or even ISDN, we know medio.link can handle it.”

We have been giving Plasma Blast Treatment to many customers and have compiled a list of the top 15 most popular questions. What is Plasma

The Nottingham Auditory Implant Programme (NAIP) is a nationally recognised centre for auditory implantation, providing cochlear implants and other hearing implants to hearing-impaired children and adults.
Their rehabilitation support model for children is one where clinicians see them in their everyday environment at home or school with family and local support professionals, and Virtual Clinics were implemented to improve the children’s communication skills and provide coaching to those close to the child, to change the mindset whereby the only way that the child can progress is in the hands of the ‘experts’ at the specialist centre.
Jayne Ramirez Inscoe, Advanced Specialist in Communication for the NAIP discusses the experience of introducing and using Virtual Clinics within the programme, “we were the first team within our large teaching hospital to request help in setting up virtual clinics for our patients, carers and local support professionals. We were introduced to Involve by our NHS Trust corporate ICT team, who recognised that Involve had successfully supported the introduction of virtual clinics in other NHS teams, so we were confident that their systems complied with NHS information governance standards and patient confidentiality and safety. The Involve team are very approachable, attentive and offer practical solutions. They have a good understanding of the obstacles and barriers of current NHS ICT systems and the primary aim of patient safety. Ben, of Involve, has continued to offer support whenever needed”.
Virtual Clinic is a video and audio calling platform designed by Involve, a leading provider of digital health solutions for the NHS. Virtual Clinic enables clinicians to schedule secure and confidential video consultations with their patients using the online booking portal, and the platform sits within the NHS N3 network with connectivity to HSCN, meaning every Virtual Clinic is completely secure, whether it is a video conference between two people within the NHS network, or users outside of the network at home using the Internet or even 4G data users.

“If they have the necessary computer and internet technology, most patients, parents, local professionals are interested in Virtual Clinics for certain appointments in the rehabilitation pathway. For some older children and their parents, it has been the best way for the child to ‘speak for themselves’, to develop communication independence, to practice conversation breakdown and repair strategies and to become competent using a telecommunication method which is used widely by both hearing and deaf people across the world: video calling.”
The primary aim of cochlear implantation is for the patients to improve their listening and communication skills, and virtual clinics present them with real-life challenges, opportunities to develop conversation skills and to practice clarification and repair strategies which will help them in everyday situations in the future. Jayne discusses how the use of Virtual Clinic has benefitted the children’s communication skills, “during a home visit, children may be harder to engage, and both children and parents can become distracted. Virtual Clinic offers a way to have shorter and more focused sessions, whilst still having the benefit of seeing the child in their home environment, thus getting a representative picture of everyday behaviour.”
“There have been further benefits through using Virtual Clinics, such as Deaf parents who may require a BSL interpreter or who live far from their child’s school for the deaf have found virtual clinics an effective way to communicate with the clinicians. Time and money have been saved by both the patients and the Trust, but the benefits from having supportive conversations over Virtual Clinics have been the greatest gain to date.”
“Our plans are to continue to expand the number of patients being offered the choice of Virtual Clinic, including with adult patients and to use more regularly with children to monitor progress between re-assessment face-to-face visits. We would and have already recommended Involve’s Virtual Clinic solution to other NHS organisations.”
To find out more about Virtual Clinic, visit our Virtual Clinic page or get in touch now. Keep your eye out for part 2 of this case study, which is an in-depth look into one person’s experience of using Virtual Clinic.

NHS England have asked hospitals to carry out more video-based consultations to help reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus.
COVID-19 is a new illness which affects your lungs and airways. It is thought to be spread by cough droplets, like similar viruses, so people who may have the virus are self-isolating to avoid contact with other humans.
This self-isolating has caused a huge rise in remote working, especially in China, where offices are closed to curb the spread of the virus and the only option is for people to work from home.
Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s chief executive describes the rise in remote working due to COVID-19 as “opportunities created by the forces of change. The crisis is a very, very big challenge to the society but also… gives people a chance to try a new way of living and new way of working”.
The NHS is a perfect example of how remote working can be vital until the coronavirus pandemic is over. Reducing the number of people attending their GP Surgery or hospital whenever possible not only increases infection control, it also reduces the pressure on these services during a time when they will be strained due to patients infected with COVID-19.
Video-based consultations, or Virtual Consultation is not a new concept, however they may be seeing their biggest surge in use ever, due to the ‘opportunity created by the forces of change’, presented by COVID-19.
As initially reported by the BBC, “Hospitals are being asked to carry out more video-based consultations of patients to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus. NHS England hopes the move will reduce the number of people in hospitals and lower the potential for transmission.”
How medio.link can help
medio.link provides the NHS and private healthcare market with the UK’s most secure and reliable video and audio meeting platform. We are proud that our platform has helped the NHS to achieve:
Over 30,000 clinical meetings via video & audio
Over 76,000 meeting participants using medio.link
600 days, 15,000 hours and 850,000 minutes of usage across the NHS