Telehealth is one of the most trending topics in the healthcare industry right now and this is all thanks to the rise in virtual care technology, especially after the pandemic where everyone was at home and couldn’t go out to visit clinic and take physical care. Talking about the same, it is known that most of the telehealth startups right now are going by the method of providing virtual care with the help of virtual prescriptions as well as examining the patients via video calls. However, we do feel that this is not enough physical examination to determine the health of a patient, which is the reason why telehealth is limited to non-life-threatening diseases right now.
Having said that, Regional Victoria based out of Australia is doing something that feels a little more interactive thanks to all the technology that we have right now. Regional Victoria is rolling out Microsoft HoloLens devices for its telehealth providers as part of its A$80,000 investment where 11 of such devices have been deployed to 25 clinicians trained for using the device for virtual care purposes. It is also worth noting that they plan to roll out this Microsoft HoloLens devices for nurses doing a home visit who can wear the headset and are guided by a doctor virtually.
Victorian Minister for Health, Mary-Anne Thomas, said “Patients recover much better at home, but that’s only possible if we’re providing them with high-quality healthcare services right at their doorstep. That’s why we’re making investments in technology like the HoloLens – so more rural and regional Victorians can get the specialist care they need either in their community,”
This rollout of the VR headsets is part of Victorian Government’s initiative known as Better at Home initiative where the idea is to free up space in hospital and provide quality care at home for its citizens so that they don’t need to visit doctors physically. The data shows that this initiative has also proven to give results as it helped free up 374,000 hospital bed days last year and was able to reach more Victorians in the same amount of time and effort.
