The Journal of mHealth Vol 1 Issue 2 (Apr 2014) | Page 38

Telehealth Case Study: Airedale Telehealth Hub
Continued from page 35

chronic illness management, to dietary
advice.
Obesity and malnutrition are two
extremes of dietary related problems
that Airedale’s specialist dieticians regularly encounter when helping prisoners.
They have been using telemedicine to
give on-screen advice and healthcare
to offenders throughout the country
for the past two years. Currently they
have telemedicine consultations with
up to three prisoners a month which
could increase as Airedale bids to provide health services for more prisons. It
involves using secure video conferencing equipment located both in the prison’s healthcare centre and the hospital
so that clinicians can carry out ‘virtual’
consultations, talking face- to-face with
the patient and occasionally carrying
out examinations using close up handheld cameras if necessary [3].
“Airedale NHS Foundation Trust
has rolled out this pioneering project to provide 20 prisons throughout
the country with immediate medical
advice using telemedicine. This covers
a range of health problems including
serious situations dealt with by skilled
Accident and Emergency consultants
to second opinions on other medical
conditions via scheduled appointments
with consultants. All prisoners who
have had consultations by this method
would otherwise have been taken out
of prison to a local hospital which can
mean an increase in both costs and the
time taken to deliver medical advice,
particularly as many prisons have a
remote location. Telemedicine consultations reduce the risk of removing prisoners from the prison and they
restore the patients’ dignity as there is
no need for escorts or handcuffs” [3].
The Hub is also piloting schemes which
utilise the same process in the management of other conditions. A pilot is
currently underway to assess the potential for using teleconsultations to help
children with Type 1 diabetes

36
April 2014

and their families manage their condition. Television set-top boxes were
installed in the homes of 10 families,
including those in rural areas, so that
young patients can see an Airedale consultant, nurse or dietician specialising
in paediatric diabetes, without leaving
their own home.
Richard Pope, diabetes consultant, said:
“We have learnt that this approach
benefits families who need intensive
specialist support. This may only be

needed for short periods of time and
we are looking in the future at moving
the equipment around to benefit more
families. When a problem has been
resolved, perhaps with a newly diagnosed child, we could move the equipment to be used by another child and
look at using it for teaching sessions for
groups of families.”
The service is similarly using the technology to deliver speech therapy sessions to sufferers of Parkinson’s Disease. LSVT Loud is a speech treatment
for Parkinson Disease and neurological
conditions, developed in America and
promoted by the National Institute
of Health, to help improve the quality
and loudness of the voice [4]. By creating therapy sessions that can be run
via the teleconference medium, it can
save time, and significantly improve the
patient experience by allowing them to
undertake treatment in the comfort of

their own home.
The benefits of an inclusive telehealth
service like the one championed by
Airedale are obviously not solely limited to the care provider, the patient’s
care experience can be greatly improved
by the implementation and use of the
system. Airedale provides treatment
to an area of Yorkshire, England that
has many remote rural communities
making travel to and from the hospital problematic and time consuming.

This is of particular inconvenience to
those suffering from chronic illnesses.
The availability of the Telehealth Hub
means that the need for many of
these hospital visits can be eliminated.
Patients know that they can directly
converse with a trained medical professional prior to making any unscheduled
visit to the hospital, and in a number
of cases arrange for scheduled consultations to be undertaken using the system. This means that in cases of nonemergency the patient can be treated