Hospital wired up for tele talking

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

South Auckland Health has entered the telemedicine age with the opening of a high-tech videoconferencing facility at Middlemore Hospital.

The $1 million Academic Centre, developed in partnership with Auckland University's Faculty of Medicine, comprises a 200-seat lecture theatre connected to two smaller seminar rooms by Tandberg videoconferencing equipment.

The centre's videoconferencing and audio-visual systems, designed and delivered by Auckland presentation technology specialist Audio Visual Concepts, allow one set of videoconferencing equipment to be used and controlled from both locations.

In the lecture theatre, a touch-sensitive panel mounted on the lectern gives the speaker control over two live cameras above the stage, as well as a VCR player and a PC with DVD player.

Images from any of these sources can be projected on to the lecture theatre's 3m by 4m screen.

Audio Visual Concepts also developed and manufactured a single device that can display radiology (x-ray) film, documents and slides and 3D objects.

Company spokesman Rob Love said it would have taken two or three different items of off-the-shelf equipment to achieve the same result.

Deputy chief medical officer Dr Ian Brown said Middlemore's medical staff would be able to hold teleconferences with their counterparts on the other side of the world.

"It's a revolution for us. I have attended medical conferences overseas where similar equipment has been used to link audiences in Singapore, Durban, and the UK very successfully.

"That's the high-tech, exciting bit, but it is our use of the centre locally that is just as important."

Dr Brown said the centre would also be used for internal meetings and to forge closer links with Auckland University's Medical School. And the hospital would hold teleconferences with other health providers in New Zealand, including local general practitioners, within two to three years.