Asklepios rolls out video conferencing to all doctors

German private hospital chain Asklepios is to install web-based videoconferencing equipment on the 13,000 PCs of all its medical doctors, enabling clinicians to far more easily get additional support or expertise from colleagues in other hospitals.

The advanced web conferencing system will enable a doctor working in any Asklepios hospital to very easily consult with or seek advice and guidance from any other clinician or group of colleagues in live video conferences. The advanced system will also enable different sources of medical information to be integrated into video conferences.

Asklepios, which runs a group of 95 hospitals, says the project is already underway. It expects to complete roll-out by the end of the year.

The private hospital group has a track record of investing in digital healthcare to deliver innovative care, including the digital hospital of the future at Asklepios Klinik Barmbek, in Hamburg.

“We are really trying to overcome distances,” said Uwe Pöttgen, head of the central IT department of Asklepios. “No matter where a patient is in our 95 hospitals: the medical knowledge of our doctors will be available at any time.”

The video conferencing network is part of a broader effort to create an Asklepios wide knowledge and competence web. Pöttgen explained: “We would like to make our doctors know what Asklepios knows.”

In addition to video conferencing, the Asklepios knowledge web will involve the creation of an electronic library with web portals that are centred around specialities like cardiology.

The Asklepios knowledge web also contains a medical expert database, including information about specialities and the research activities of doctors in the different institutions.

The central idea behind the knowledge web is to provide a doctor on a ward with access to specialist knowledge that is not available in his own institution. A doctor will be able to access this expertise by clicking on an information button in his hospital information system that will provide online research together with the contact details names and contact details of specialists in other Asklepios institutions.

The doctor then has the option to easily contact these clinical specialists, either conventionally by phone or email or by using the video conferencing system.

Inside Asklepios, the project is called “OneIT+”, representing the next stage on from an earlier project called “OneIT” finished two years ago in cooperation with Microsoft and Intel.

Asklepios hospitals standardised the IT infrastructure of the LBK hospitals in Hamburg and implemented a central IT management infrastructure. OneIT turned into the largest migration project in the history of the German healthcare industry and brought together all information systems that are used within Asklepios on a common Microsoft platform.

The technology behind the new video conferencing system is being provided by Microsoft and SyynX Solutions, a subsidiary of the US-based company Collexis. Technology used includes Microsoft Office Communication Servers and the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Servers.

The expert database was developed by SyynX Solutions using an algorithm that automatically scans national and international medical databases for publications or citations of the specialist. Using this information, an expert profile or “electronic fingerprint” is created. This gives the user a far more detailed impression about what an expert actually knows than a simple list of his sub-specialities.

“With this innovative approach to knowledge management, Asklepios is a pioneer. The project also underlines Asklepios’ leading position in the European private hospital market”, said Tobias Kaltenbach, CEO of Asklepios, at a press conference in Hamburg.

The main goal of the project, Kaltenbach said, was to improve patient care. But from a business point of view, Asklepios would also like to share specialist knowledge across institutions so that highly specialised experts do not have to be employed at every single hospital.

In the future, this has the potential to be cross-borders as well: Although Asklepios is predominantly a German hospital chain at the moment, it is increasingly engaging abroad, for example by building up hospitals in Greece, Portugal, China, Russia, and in the US.