Perth's Velrada co-develops Microsoft-based 'telemedicine' solution for rural communities

Perth-based Microsoft partner Velrada has co-developed a “telemedicine” solution with the vendor aimed for remote communities.

The solution uses Microsoft Teams and Microsoft HoloLens to help medical professionals deliver health services to geographically isolated populations around Australia and diagnose patients remotely.

The solution aims to expand the capabilities of local nurses by facilitating appointments with specialists through Teams while wearing a HoloLens headset. Using the tech aims to create an enhanced and interactive view of patients from the same perspective as the nurse they are connected to.

Patients also communicate with the specialists through Teams through a speaker connected to the HoloLens, and nurses and specialists can also provide further instructions by drawing and annotating on the holographic screen.

Bairnsdale Regional Health Service (BRHS) piloted the solution in the remote community of Dargo, Victoria to connect healthcare professionals from urban centres. The community’s local facility, the Dargo Bush Nursing Centre in East Gippsland, Victoria, is staffed by senior nurses looking after some 100 patients.

The patients of the community often have to travel hundreds of kilometres to the nearest general practitioners (GPs) and specialists.

The pilot ran for eight weeks with nurses conducting 12 telemedicine appointments, connecting to specialists in Melbourne, a 4.5 hour drive from Dargo.

To facilitate the pilot, a SpaceX Starlink satellite dish was installed in Dargo Bush Nursing Centre to improve the facility’s connectivity to support the videoconferencing.

“BRHS had a local electrician install a SpaceX Starlink satellite dish at the Dargo Bush Nursing Centre to ensure fast and reliable connectivity to the cloud using Azure Space,” Velrada chief innovation officer Dan Hookham said.

“That provided the bandwidth needed for Velrada’s Mixed Reality as a Service technology, which delivered the trial telemedicine solution.”

After completing the pilot, BRHS plans to adopt the telemedicine model at other bush nursing centres, regional health services and aged care facilities across the region.

BRHS chief executive Robyn Hales said, “The telemedicine solution is absolutely ground-breaking for healthcare in East Gippsland.”

“By bridging the geographical gap between patients and specialists, we can better meet the medical needs of our diverse population while minimising disruption to their lives and livelihoods.

“The combination of satellite and mixed reality technologies and Microsoft’s Azure Space cloud infrastructure have taken our service to the next level of care.”

Microsoft Australia chief medical officer Dr Nic Woods said, “This is a really exciting development for telemedicine – nurses can work hands-free to provide treatment or assistance during the sessions, patients can explain their symptoms directly and doctors can see what the nurses see in better detail to support clinical decision making and management for the patient.”

Woods added the pilot has given BRHS the opportunity to scale across the region and help reduce the challenges of healthcare delivery in Australia’s most remote regions.

“It’s a model that other communities across Australia and around the world can replicate, and it shows how this nascent democratisation of space combined with new technologies such as mixed reality can truly benefit not only patient’s but also for regional and remote clinician’s with their ability to access GPs, medical specialists and other care stakeholders in a more interactive and collaborative way.”