UC benefits healthcare, education

One of the major obstacles hindering service delivery in the education and healthcare sectors is a shortage of skilled practitioners.

So says Alain Schram, COO at technology and communication solutions company, Kathea, who adds that unified communications (UC) technology offers a solution to service delivery challenges.

Typically, addressing these issues has involved a lot of travel as skilled persons move around the country conducting workshops and lectures in an effort to transfer knowledge, says Schram.

This is not the most efficient or cost-effective method of service delivery. Government needs to examine the potential of advanced technology in an effort to fully utilise skills and ensure skills development and transfer can take place more effectively, adds Schram.

In the healthcare sector, UC, along with collaboration tools such as video and data, allow skilled doctors to consult to clinics and hospitals in remote areas via video conferencing, and even let them share files, such as x-rays, patient charts and histories, across geographic boundaries.

Vox Telecom spokesperson Gene van der Walt explains the benefit of UC through a practical example.

"A GP requires the immediate expert advice of a specialist in order to assess the severity or urgency of a patient's condition.

"He utilises the UC platform in order to determine which specialist is available to assist. He sees that Dr X is available via chat or even video conferencing. He makes a call to the specialist and shares the specific ECG scan with him.

"The specialist diagnoses a defective ventricle that requires an urgent operation. The client is booked for an operation and valuable time (and potentially a life) is saved."

Adds Schram: "In remote areas where nurses are often charged with running clinics, but are unable to diagnose conditions, they can collaborate with a doctor in one of the major cities for faster diagnosis and treatment.

"With sophisticated collaboration tools now available, all the nurse would need is a smart device, like a tablet, in order to communicate.

"In this way, skills that are typically only available in the private healthcare sector can cost-effectively be made available in the public healthcare sector as well, and more immediate solutions can be found to medical problems without the need for travel."

Moving to the education sector, Schram says UC and video collaboration can be used to deliver lectures from a central point to multiple locations, with potentially thousands of students using high-quality video.

Documents, such as lecture notes and worksheets, can be shared and distributed, and students can use messaging systems to ask questions during a lecture. A moderator can then accumulate these questions and pose them to the lecturer when relevant.

"Lectures can even be recorded and then made available using video-on-demand, which means students can go back to the lecture if they missed something or catch up on a class they were unable to attend," says Stanton Naidoo, country manager for Polycom SA.

"Video-on-demand also enables the recorded lectures to be dubbed into other languages, so students can receive home language education without the need for the teacher or lecturer to speak the language. The possibilities for education are endless," Naidoo adds.

Van der Walt offers an example to explain the benefits of UC in education.

"A teacher gives class to students in Grade 12 mathematics. A question is raised or problem identified that the teacher does not have the answer to.

"The teacher accesses the UC platform and sees that professor X from Y university is available. The teacher dials the professor and the problem or question is explained. The professor provides the answer and the class is brought to new levels of understanding."

Schram says UC and video collaboration in healthcare and education offers the best solution to the challenges these sectors face.

The broad availability of 3G, the imminent roll out of LTE, and improved codecs (microchips that compress or decompress data) that enable higher-quality video to be broadcast over less bandwidth, are now a reality.

With satellite communications becoming increasingly affordable, the potential of UC has been extended further, into even the most remote areas, Schram says.

Adopting UC and collaboration technology will enable government to deliver better services to more people, in a more cost-effective manner, while reducing travel costs and carbon footprints.

"The future of government lies in embracing technology to enable better, more cost-effective service delivery across multiple sectors," Schram concludes.