Development of a broadband telehealth system for critical care: process and lessons learned.

A broadband telehealth system has been developed for supporting critical care services between a major referral hospital and a rural hospital by transmitting very high-quality, realtime multimedia information, including images, audio and real-time video, over an Internet Protocol (IP)-based network. The technical design team took an iterative and user-centred approach toward the system design. Usability tests with scenario analysis were incorporated into the development process to produce a system that operates seamlessly in the critical care environment.

The ViCCU Project -- achieving virtual presence using Ultrabroadband internet in a Critical Clinical application -- initial results.

The ViCCU (Virtual Critical Care Unit) Project sought to address the problems of shortages of Critical Care staff by developing a system that could use the capabilities of Ultrabroadband networks so as to have a Critical Care Specialist virtually present at a distant location. This is not possible in a clinically useful way with current systems. A new system (ViCCU) was developed and deployed.