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Virtual Critical Care Unit

ViCCU®

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The Virtual Critical Care Unit (ViCCU®) won the iMPLEMENTATION: TELECOMMUNICATIONS category in the 2004 AIIA Awards

 

The high bandwidths being made available through advanced networks such as CeNTIE  making possible new critical care telehealth applications not achievable at ISDN bandwidths. Critical care applications typically include Emergency, Obstetrics and Intensive Care. These applications are characterised by:

  • Complexity
  • Time-criticality
  • Complex, multimedia information space
  • Several members of a team working simultaneously
  • Interrupt driven mode of working
  • Focus on patient, not technology

In collaboration with Wentworth Area Health Service and NSW Health, CSIRO has developed and installed a "Virtual Critical Care Unit" (ViCCU®). This allows a specialist intensivist located at one hospital to supervise a resuscitation team located at a peripheral hospital. 

 

In the first instance, the central hospital is Nepean Hospital, on the western outskirts of Sydney. The peripheral hospital is Blue Mountains District Hospital, located 60 km further west in Katoomba. The communications are based on technology developed by CeNTIE. The two hospitals will be connected to CSIRO laboratories via the CeNTIE network.

ViCCU® is designed so that all information required by the intensivist to make judgments on patient treatment is available in real time, as if he or she were present at the peripheral hospital.

This is achieved by transmitting several high quality digital video channels, high quality audio, vital signs data, written notes and medical images. Two-way high bandwidth video permits natural, low-latency "telepresence" interaction with the intensivist.

The system is designed to be robust, fault-tolerant and easy to use in the highly stressful atmosphere of the Emergency Department.

Wentworth Area Health Service has developed special training and operation protocols in collaboration with the CSIRO researchers and the Sydney Medical Simulation Unit located at Royal North Shore Hospital.

*The CeNTIE project is supported by the Australian Government through the Advanced Networks Program of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts and CSIRO ICT Centre.