Alcatel has been awarded a contract by Telbios, an Italian provider of health-care services, to provide telemedicine facilities for patient assistance and remote monitoring. The project will make residential telemedicine services available to the public by the end of 2006. The services are currently being evaluated at the Istituto Scientifico Universitario San Raffaele.
This solution will be based on Alcatel's Genesys contact centre platform, which combines call centre functionalities with the ability to manage video calls, including those from mobile terminals. This will enable a wider number of institutions and hospitals to access these services, and assist their patients with a range of residential telemedicine services.
Telbios will add video assistance to its portfolio of telemedicine services, already offered by its telemedicine centre using television as a preferred interaction tool between operators and patients. The new telemedicine service will be available on terrestrial, mobile and satellite broadband networks to allow patients not covered by terrestrial broadband to benefit.
Besides video calls and videoconferences on mobile terminals, electronic medical and lifestyle data will be securely transmitted over the network. The patient can also receive interpretation and diagnosis information, sent by the medical staff of the Telemedicine Centre, on the television set at home. The solution will require the installation of a dedicated set-top box (STB) at the patient's premises, which will be connected to the television, and a webcam to enable video calls.
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