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Telemedicine has appeared in the money-saving ability to hospital operations, improved patient safety, and given more people access to healthcare service among other benefits. In use for a variety of years, it’s here to remain as an important tool for inpatient care.

At Marin General Hospital, we've been assimilating telemedicine into our patient care operations a few times. For instance, we use two-way analysis with off-site neurologists for rapid calculations of patients with stroke symptoms; an off-site eICU as backup monitoring of our ICU patients; as a teleconference tool between patients and their families here in Marin and specialists in pediatric diabetes at UCSF; and as how to supply two-way teleconferencing translation devices to our non-English speaking patients in order that they are better ready to clearly communicate and receive information about their care.

With the opening in 2020 of our new state-of-the-art hospital, the utilization of telemedicine at Marin General Hospital goes to require an enormous breakthrough.

Our first patients will find themselves getting advantage from one among the first innovative and practical uses of telemedicine—“virtual presence,” the primary use of the technology to the in-hospital patient experience.

Each patient room within the new hospital building is going to be installed with security cameras, large TV screens on the wall facing the bed, and tablet devices at each bedside. lecture your caregiver team is going to be as close and straightforward as pressing a button on your bedside device. As a patient, you'll either initiate or accept, when convenient, a routine two-way video call from your nurse, or schedule a video session from the pharmacist ensuring you understand the way to use your medications.

Patient rank falls just behind medication errors within the list of incidents generating harm during a hospital; we believe having a 24-hour security camera presence within the room will have a serious impact on our fall prevention efforts, especially with patients at high risk for falling and who require the services of a sitter. The camera won't only transmit the image of every patient to a central security station but also alert staff on the unit if any unusual movement has occurred within the room or around the bed.

Virtual presence is certain to bring changes, not only to the patient experience but also to the caregiver team. Patterns and roles will likely change, duties may differ, new routines will involve new training.

At Marin General Hospital, we'll be taking the time we've before we enter our new building to deal with these challenges. By the top of the year, we'll have installed cameras and communication devices in several rooms in our current building in preparation for virtual presence to be used throughout the entire facility.

A basic question I buy when defining this new use of telemedicine: will virtual presence importantly lessen human presence for our patients and truly be a negative? Surveys show that interaction with a caregiver is cited by patients together of the very best drivers of patient satisfaction.

Admittedly we are entering an entirely new world of healthcare with a virtual presence. Within the near future, however, we believe that virtual presence with its frequent two-way conversations between patient and caregiver will actually increase patient satisfaction. As an example, our new hospital building will have 3 times the square footage of the previous patient care area but with an equivalent number of beds. With more room to hide, caregivers might not be ready to spend the maximum amount of time in rooms as they previously had; virtual presence can help fill in a number of the gaps.

In the more distant future, we believe virtual presence are going to be not just a completely unique use of technology, but rather a necessity during a world with a growing aging community and a diminishing workforce of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. In our future hospitals, we'll detect the use of the virtual members of the healthcare team: wireless technology which will casually keep tabs on a patient’s condition; a virtual world of healthcare professionals who can help patients stay informed; more eyes and ears keeping patients from harm.

Marin General Hospital is going to be one of the primary hospitals within the country to adopt a virtual presence system for inpatient use. Because we are an area, independent hospital, we've been ready to quickly adopt a variety of innovative ideas and switch them into action. There’ll always be challenges and maybe some unintended consequences, but we are extremely excited to supply our patients this new experience—having the services of an entire team of caregivers, at their fingertips, without having to go away from the security and luxury of the bed or room.