Telecare

Videoconferencing enables improved healthcare for cancer patients

February 2006

A national shortage of cancer specialists and palliative care professionals led the Surrey, West Sussex and Hampshire (SWSH) Cancer Network to install videoconferencing systems, enabling scarce-on-the-ground specialists to spend less time travelling and more time on patient treatment.

Such has been the success of the system that, six years later, the Network has decided to upgrade to a more powerful videoconferencing system enabling them to hold multipoint conferences and to extend their reach to include hospices.

Multidisciplinary team meetings play a crucial role in the care of cancer patients and videoconferencing allows us to easily and quickly bring together key participants cancer specialists, surgeons, pathologists, radiologists and now palliative care specialists saving time and money spent on travelling, said Ben Thomas, SWSH Cancer Network Director.

The ability to bring the right people together quickly and easily at the right time speeds up the decision-making process, resulting in the highest levels of treatment for our patients and ensures that they are treated by the best possible healthcare team, added Dr Peter Hargreaves, Consultant in Palliative Medicine at the Macmillan Cancer Unit, King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst and Chair of the SWSH Cancer Network Video Conferencing Project.

Polycom conferencing systems have been installed in 14 sites across SWSH (including the St Lukes Cancer Centre at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford, East Surrey Hospital in Redhill, Crawley Hospital and the King Edward VII Hospital).

Hospices/specialist palliative care centres now equipped with videoconferencing facilities include the Macmillan Unit (located within the King Edward VII Hospital), Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice in Farnham, the Beacon Centre in Guildford, the Marie Curie Unit in Caterham, St Michaels Hospice in Basingstoke and The Sam Beare Unit at the Weybridge Community Hospital.

Over the last six years we had a faultless service from our Polycom video systems, said Dr Hargreaves, but we wanted to extend the network to include hospices and knew we would need to upgrade, enabling us to reach a larger audience. The upgrade would also enable us to hold multipoint conferences.

They decided also to invest in a new personal videoconferencing system, the Polycom VSX 3000 an all-in-one system with built-in camera, microphone, speakers and 17-inch LCD display that can also be used as the PC monitor. With this new system, I can keep working at my desk until it is time to join a meeting, said Dr Hargreaves. I dont even have to move to another office to participate in the video call a very efficient use of my time.

It is really important to us that the SWSH Cancer Network continues to obtain return on investment on its video solution by maintaining high levels of usage, said David Rose, Sales Director at Audio Visual Machines, the Polycom partner that installed and now supports the Polycom videoconferencing system.

We have put a training programme in place that covers one-to-one and group sessions for existing and potential users plus planning for future applications. Videoconferencing is already being used to provide peer support between the Cancer Centre, Cancer units and the hospices, ongoing training and supervision for palliative care nurses and regular monthly education slots when a remotely located expert gives a lecture on a specific topic dietary requirements for example.

Videoconferencing has helped us to meet the objectives of the SWSH Cancer Network we have developed new models of palliative and supportive care, promoted integrated working across all healthcare disciplines and palliative care staff are now able to join multidisciplinary team meetings all of which lead to improved healthcare for our patients, concluded Dr Hargreaves. The next stage for me is looking at using videoconferencing for remote patient consultations.