Jordan Owens discusses how Pexip is making it easier for doctors and patients to connect by video
Elly Yates-Roberts |
“Pexip’s telehealth division was founded on the principle of helping organisations provide better care for more patients, wherever they are in the world, through telehealth,” says Jordan Owens, vice president of architecture at the video-first collaboration company.
Telehealth enables patients to benefit from healthcare remotely via video solutions from the comfort of their own home, removing the need to visit a doctor’s surgery, clinic or hospital.
“Many people live too far away from a specialist to reasonably get medical advice in a face-to-face setting,” says Owens. “For others, they may be too old, or too ill to make this trip. This is where we come in. Historically there has been a substantial amount of friction for providers and individuals to connect into a video-first media experience as they had to install a special system for every call, or because they couldn’t just use their mobile device to connect. We are working to remove that friction.”
Pexip has created a platform that enables patients and doctors to set up a video meeting from whatever solution each wants to use.
“We provide a door to get into that consultation in a branded, customised way through whatever means is easiest for the attendees, whether that be through a web browser, an application, or a mobile device,” Owens explains. “For example, the provider wants to host the meeting using Microsoft Teams, but the patient doesn’t have Teams, or is unable to install it or use the Teams Web app.
“For patients that use these solutions, our job is to make video calls as easy as possible,” Owens adds. “We want to get them to their online consultation from whatever device they might have, without involving lots of technology or forcing them to use many buttons.”
The company has been working with the US Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) to help care for the country’s 20 million military veterans.
“Together, we have built an automation architecture that allows the VA to simply send a notice to the patient in the form of an e-mail, or maybe in the form of a push notification in the future, where the user presses one button and they simply get joined into the call,” Owens adds. “The system figures out what device they want to join from and how it needs to route them.”
But simplicity isn’t the only major concern for the patient; confidentiality, privacy and comfort are essential aspects of the clinical experience.
“By using the Pexip platform as the back end, healthcare providers are able to completely customise the experience, add logos and colour schemes, and truly make it their solution so that when a patient dials in, they are connecting into a VA platform for example, not a Pexip platform,” Owens explains. “This is extremely important because we have taken accessibility a step further, giving them that level of trust and comfort.
“At the end of the day, it’s about taking care of more people in a better, easier and quicker way.”
For caregivers, the platform also provides easy access to important information.
“As much as it is about joining the call quickly and easily for the medical personnel, it is also about gaining access to all the other data that they need to drive an effective patient experience,” says Owens. “For example, the platform can integrate with medical records so that the doctor can track the patient’s data and make the best use of the video meeting.”
Pexip can also simplify operations for healthcare providers; the solution easily integrates with existing infrastructure.
“Organisations often heavily adopt Microsoft technologies into their environments and workflows,” says Owens. “We can help them extend those Microsoft technologies out to the patients and doctors, without changing anything about the way that the IT organisation ultimately wants to run things.
“We can get a patient to join a call very quickly, very easily from whatever device they have, and give them that feeling of trust and care,” he adds. “We can give the doctor the ability to access all of the data that they need around them in order to create that complete experience. And we can give the IT organisation the ability to flatten everything about their internal infrastructure into a very quick and seamless platform. We are uniquely positioned to satisfy all three imperatives.”
This article was originally published in the Winter 2019 issue of The Record. Subscribe for FREE here to get the next issues delivered directly to your inbox.