Intermountain Healthcare using VSee for Neonatal ICU (NICU)

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At the recent American Telemedicine Association (ATA) conference in Austin, TX, Intermountain Healthcare gave an exciting demo of their innovative use of VSee for neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Key to their setup was VSee’s ability to send multiple camera video streams at the same time.  Legacy systems such as Vidyo, Polycom, and Cisco can only send 1 camera feed at a time.

Dr. Stephen Minton, Intermountain neonatologist and director of newborn services, gave a talk at ATA and showcased several powerful medical work flows for VSee NICU that he helped design.  Intermountain’s 60-bed NICU renovation powered by VSee will be in operation in 3-4 months.

Dr. Minton Neonatal telemedicine demo

Dr. Minton, the remote specialist

VSee telehealth Neonatal ICU

3 HD camera views of the isolette

VSee telehealth NICU demo

Doctor being directed in the resuscitation procedure

Three HD webcams are mounted on the isolette (for medical procedures) or warmer (holding crib) to show the baby from different angles and one webcam is aimed at the nurse/doctor for communicating with the remote neonatologist. The webcams are connected to a Mac mini and the entire setup is positioned such as to not take up space from working doctors and nurses.

isolette neonatal telehealth demo

Isolette setup using 3 Logitech 920 webcams, a Mac mini, & VSee

For high-risk babies that need specialist care, such as a resuscitation procedure, it’s no longer necessary to do a costly, time-consuming transfer from a local hospital to the hospital where the neonatologist is located.  Instead, a neonatologist like Dr. Minton can easily extend his care to another hospital via VSee in a matter of seconds. Through live video streams coming from the different webcams, a seasoned specialist can direct a less experienced doctor in the procedure.

For anxious parents, the VSee telemedicine NICU can now offer them around the clock access to their infants. Parents often feel like they don’t have enough time to see their little ones during their NICU visits. Using VSee, parents and families can call in anytime to see their babies.  They can even hold the iPad in their arms as though they are holding their babies and sleep with them in bed.

Finally, for busy doctors, These NICU beds can be set to auto-receive calls securely only from them so they can check in on a little patient at any time.

Learn more about VSee simple telehealth here.

Blue Jeans Copied VSee Dual-Streaming HD Video + Content for iPad?

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VSee vs. Blue Jeans on iPad
vsee vs bluejeans iOS

I recently saw a Blue Jeans Network newsletter announcing its exciting new feature: “dual HD streams for interactive video and content sharing.” Dual streaming has the advantage that meeting participants can see both video and content at the same time as they work together.  They claim this is an industry first, they are the first company that does this.

The problem is VSee already beat Blue Jeans to this “industry first” — an iOS app that offers HD content sharing. VSee for iPad not only allows for 5-way video and shared apps, it also supports receiving live annotation for a rich collaborative experience.  VSee ranks higher than Blue Jeans on the App Store, so their marketing should have seen VSee before it made the claim :)

In fact, seeing faces and content together has been a key design feature of VSee for years. (Btw, this was decided upon way back when VSee was still a concept being born out of Stanford University human factors research in teamwork and video collaboration.)

To be fair, I think Blue Jeans did made the right design decision. People do need to see faces and content at the same time.  But sorry Blue Jeans – it is not okay to claim you are the first when this was already done by your key competitor a long time ago :)

VSee video + content design traces back to numerous academic research studies conducted the past two decades.   For a great summary of research that shaped the VSee design thinking, check out Finn, Sellen, and Wilbur’s Video-Mediated Communication.

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Skype Risks – Putting Your Privacy in Microsoft’s Hand

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Skype telemedicine users, here’s more bad news for you when it comes to Skype privacy. The H Security team recently found evidence that Microsoft does make use of their Skype security policies to read users’ text chats.  As they put it “Anyone who uses Skype has consented to the company reading everything they write.

After sending out 2 test HTTPS URLs using Skype instant messaging service, H Security found those URLs receive an unannounced visit from Microsoft HQ in Redmond. The significance of this H Security explains is that

URLs pointing to encrypted web pages frequently contain unique session data or other confidential information…. In visiting these pages, Microsoft made use of both the login information and the specially created URL for a private cloud-based file-sharing service.

Skype claims that accessing URLs is standard way to check for spam and phishing sites, but the H Security isn’t buying it:

Spam and phishing sites are not usually found on HTTPS pages. By contrast, Skype leaves the more commonly affected HTTP URLs, containing no information on ownership, untouched. Skype also sends head requests which merely fetches administrative information relating to the server. To check a site for spam or phishing, Skype would need to examine its content.

Read more from Skype with care – Microsoft is reading everything you write

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Alternative Therapy Gets Energy Boost from VSee Telehealth

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Healing gardenWho would have thought that cutting edge technology and alternative healing could go hand in hand. At VSee we love it that unexpected use cases are always turning up with VSee’s simple group video chat tool. Recently, VSee was featured in the Repatterning Journal as a wonderful tool for the art of resonance repatterning – an alternative therapy to helping people live life more fully. Carolyn Winters, Repatterning Practitioner and Holographic Coach who has been using VSee to teach writes in the article Repatterning Journal article:

Our experience of Resonance Repatterning seminars online has been nothing short of amazing. I had the delightful experience of discussing this with an enthusiastic representative at VSee who explained the back story for the high frequency and coherence we are experiencing with this technology.

She adds on her own site:

A few of my coaching clients have also personally benefited from this technology as we have started to use face-to-face videoconferencing rather than Skype or the telephone. These sessions are so amazing because I can share the notes with you on the screen and if a modality requires a demonstration, easily show you what to do.

While it may seem an odd fit, Carolyn notes “Keeping pace with the new tools for learning and connecting, makes us better healers and recipients of healing. Knowing what is behind something new empowers us to use the tools that are effective.”

Check out her interview with me and Milton here.

VSee New Release 516 for Windows: Multi-Language Chat!

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VSee update releaseVSee users around the world can now text chat and display names in any language! Please take a few moments to make sure your VSee has been updated to

Windows version: 13.0.0.516

The following additions have been made:

  1. VSee API 3.0 support for secure telehealth work flow
  2. Full name display on private chats
  3. Multi-language support for:
    • IM/private chat & chat history
    • Group name & contact name
    • Password

Special thanks to Eric, James, John, Simon and the Web team for this Windows release!

To see if you are on this latest version of VSee:

Windows version 13.0.0.516   - Click the Help icon in the address book –>select “About VSee…” and see if it is the newest version. VSee will download the newest client for you (which will show as a checkmark in task tray icon). Simply restart the program to use the updated VSee.

Please contact VSee support team with any problems, questions, or suggestions you may have!

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