In the wake of COVID, healthcare organisations have a tremendous opportunity to leverage telehealth – but they're no doubt overwhelmed by all the various solutions out there. And hospitals and health systems want an enterprise solution, not dozens of point solutions.

The real question is: What does an enterprise telehealth solution look like? Some health systems have dozens of telehealth solutions in their organisation. Can they consolidate down to at least 3-4 instead of that many?

These considerations were part of a conversation had with Pete McLain, Chief Strategy Officer at Caregility. What does an enterprise telehealth solution look like, and what does it include? Does it need to include ambulatory, or is there enough in-house telehealth need that it can be and should be a separate system? There are some significant differences between having a camera and audio connection to an exam room than a home. Even within exam rooms, the setup is likely different in regards to what's needed in an ICU vs. a patient in a regular exam room.

Of course, that's not the only telehealth that needs to be considered in a hospital. You may want to deploy virtual sitters to be able to watch rooms more efficiently. Plus, the technology should hopefully enhance your virtual sitting, which is a rather mundane job that can be improved by the right notifications. We can throw in remote interpretation as well, which has been so important lately as so many studies show how care is impacted when there's not an interpreter present.

Now you can start to see why even telehealth within the hospital requires a fundamental enterprise solution. There are so many areas that telehealth can add value and help an organisation be more efficient. In fact, given staffing shortages, McLain pointed out how important these technologies will be to a healthcare organisation. Being able to have one person virtual sit more patients is going to be essential. Making nurse and physician rounding more efficient must happen in order to provide the best care possible as many organisations suffer from staff shortages. These telehealth solutions can make this possible.

One question many are considering and even implementing in their plans is: Do you need a video camera and audio in every room? Many are concluding that they do need to do this. In fact, many were interested in this before COVID, but COVID has given them the momentum to get the budget for it.

What is fascinating about this is when you compare it to a documentation computer in every exam room. Many tech people pushed for an EHR documentation computer in every exam room. While nice, they later realised that it was often better to tie the workstation to the clinician rather than the room. Organisations were wasting money on computers in every room when a mobile workstation would be much more effective.

At first, it was thought this would be similar to a video camera and mic in an exam room for telehealth. However, telehealth is quite different. In this case, the video camera and microphone are more tied to the patient versus the clinician. Linked to the patient, it makes sense to push for a video camera and microphone in every exam room.

One thing McLain from Caregility found was that many people didn't appreciate how important audio is when implementing telehealth in an exam room. He shared that at Caregility, some of their most important work has been figuring out how to ensure that the audio they collect in their telehealth products was working effectively in a wide variety of situations the patient might be in. For example, throwing a tablet in the room doesn't consider the fact that many patients may not be able to hold the tablet. If you've ever done a video call trying to listen to someone who's not right in front of the tablet, you know this is a less than an ideal experience. That's the situation for many patients in exam rooms. Another essential element to a real enterprise telehealth solution is security. The easy security question is around encryption and law compliance. Most telehealth solutions do this pretty well. However, how many of them have an enterprise way to manage user access to the various telehealth devices?

In telehealth video to people's homes, security isn't hard to implement. The same is not valid for telehealth in a hospital, where shift changes require you to adjust who needs access to which rooms. Not to mention patients who move rooms and throw off who needs telehealth access to those rooms. Plus, all of this has to be monitored, tracked and auditable so a healthcare organisation can know who saw the patient, when they saw them and other essential details that may be needed later. Many telehealth solutions don't take user access, security and audit logs seriously.

What will the enterprise telehealth solution look like? It definitely won't be 20 different telehealth solutions. Although, if healthcare organisations could get to 3-4, they'd be thrilled. The good news is that the technology is there, and the desire to implement these solutions is too.