Hospitals and healthcare facilities have had to become extra-resourceful in the COVID-19 era as the pandemic has upended nearly every process and operation, from food service and air filtration to environmental services. Information technology is no exception.

As COVID-19 swept across the country last spring, teams at Banner Health quickly acquired more tablets so doctors could conduct virtual rounding and other critical communications from a distance.

Though effective, this solution wasn’t good enough for James Roxburgh, the organization’s CEO of telehealth. The approach still required a nurse to enter a patient’s room with the tablet to facilitate each telehealth session, according to HealthTech.

Convinced that Banner Health could do better, he reached out to his previous employer, VeeMed, a California-based telemedicine solutions company, as well as Intel to convert existing televisions in nearly 1,200 patient rooms into virtual care endpoints across the Phoenix-based system, which operates 28 hospitals in six states.

The solution: a telehealth kit with an Intel NUC Mini PC, a pan-tilt-zoom camera and a Jabra Speak 510 speakerphone. The kit connects to the patient’s room television with an HDMI cable, and the NUC runs VeeMed software.

Now, when physicians want to meet with a COVID-19 patient virtually, they can launch the visit via their own tablets or smartphones and connect directly to the in-room television monitor. If an onsite nurse determines a virtual consult is needed, he or she can notify a doctor through the telehealth portal and use a remote control from outside a patient’s room to cue up the television.

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