Videoconferencing & UB School of Nursing
EDTECH Editor-Beil
This comes from Scott Erdley, a Doctoral Candidate in Nursing. The
implications for all of us, in Health, Education, Telehealth and other
areas of technologly , is as my 10 year old would say, "Cool" Scott is
also a decent person and has a nice web site too.
Sorry for any cross postings.
Thanks,
Bob Pyke Jr.,RN,CPNP
Folks, this was an interesting experience that I thought I'd share with
all of you. This is copied directly from the article in the
Reporter, one of the university's newspapers
(http://www.buffalo.edu and click on News). Apologies if it sounds like
I'm 'tooting a horn' <grin>. Scott
W. Scott Erdley, MS, RN SoN - SUNY@Buffalo, NY
Doctoral Candidate, Nursing erd...@acsu.buffalo.edu
SoN Curriculum DB Mgr. http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~erdley
*********************************************************************
UB Group Brings High-Quality
Videoconferencing And
Streaming Video To The Desktop
Release date: Tuesday, August 10, 1999
Contact: Ellen Goldbaum, gold...@buffalo.edu
Phone: 716-645-2626
Fax: 716-645-3765
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- How long will it be before you
can participate in a videoconference or "visit"
with an overseas client without leaving your
desk? If a recent experiment at the University at
Buffalo is any indication, it could be much sooner
than many people think.
"It worked beautifully," said Nancy
Campbell-Heider, Ph.D., UB nursing professor, of
the demonstration in which UB staff brought
high-quality videoconferencing and streaming
video to the desktop over the Internet.
The success has major implications for
health-care delivery in remote areas and for
distance learning, especially within the next few
years when Internet2, with its huge bandwidth
capacity, is up and running.
The purpose of the experiment was practical: UB
nursing faculty wanted to tap into and broadcast
an evaluation of a student working with a patient
in a clinical setting for a conference presentation
in California about the use of videoconferencing
to remotely evaluate students. But the usual
videoconferencing linkup using telephone lines
was not available at the conference site.
So UB information-technology staff decided to
use the Internet, an extremely attractive -- if
technically challenging -- option. The interactive
session was transmitted to desktop viewers at UB
and throughout the clinical site at Erie County
Medical Center (ECMC) over an Internet
conference "bridge" at Ohio State University.
Currently, videoconferencing takes place over
ISDN (integrated services digital network) lines,
which are installed individually and incur charges
as telephone calls do. But with the Internet,
anyone with a desktop PC and Internet access is
suddenly a potential audience member.
The experiment taxed the resources of UB staff
and faculty. Right up until airtime, UB staff
members were working to fix technical glitches.
Peter Jorgensen, UB senior programmer analyst,
literally was slicing into cables with a knife to
remedy a problem that was interfering with video
transmission. In the meantime, James Whitlock,
UB associate director of computing services who
was coordinating controls from Maine, where he
was on vacation, was making plans to fly
equipment to Buffalo, if necessary. Luckily, with
four minutes left until scheduled airtime,
Jorgensen found and fixed the problem.
At the same time, Zydacron, Inc.; Cisco Systems,
Inc., and RADvision and Viewcom, the companies
responsible for developing the technologies that
eventually will make desktop videoconferencing
and streaming video ubiquitous, provided the UB
group with major donations of equipment and
staff assistance.
According to Whitlock, UB, ECMC, Ohio State and
the companies all saw the value of making this
demonstration work.
"We needed to do this," said Whitlock, who, along
with UB IT staff members and their counterparts
from the UB nursing and medical schools and
ECMC, spent the two weeks leading up to the
experiment working on the project nearly
round-the-clock.
"People need to see these things in order to
understand what they are," said Whitlock. "It's
very visceral. What we managed to do was give
people a glimpse of the horizon, which is coming
at them very rapidly. It may be five years before
we can do this with relative ease, but that's very
rapid in comparison to how long it will take people
and institutions to adapt to it."
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EDTECH Editor-Beil
Hi Bob,
Thanks for that. Interesting, yes, new - not really! In many circles
Internet videoconferencing is old hat. We've been using it to teach
languages for a year and a half now; the software is free (NetMeeting, by
Microsoft), so all users need is a computer with internet access, a webcam
(=A3 70 - =A3 90 in the UK), and a headset with a microphone (=A3 5 in the =
UK).
What amazes me personally is not the fact that it's around, but that so few
people know about it and use it - so thanks for spreading the word! It
really is a viable alternative to dedicated videoconferencing systems or
even just long-distance telephone calls.
Oh, on similar lines to using them for human medicine - we're working on a
project with an international association of vets; they've been using
NetMeeting for some time to help communicate globally during outbreaks of
life-threatening diseases which can spread to humans, such as foot-and-mout=
h
disease and others.
Cheers
Eric Baber
http://www.nll.co.uk ; http://www.interpreters-online.com
EDTECH Editor-Beil
The difference is perhaps in "high quality" and a 'many to many' capability
which is implied by the 'bridge' mentioned in the article. NetMeeting does =
not
stand for either.
It would be interesting to have some more details - number of separate site=
s
using the link simultaneously, bandwidth used, streaming video and network
specifications, actual video quality during the event etc.
Yannis Karaliotas
Eric Baber wrote:
> Thanks for that. Interesting, yes, new - not really! In many circles
> Internet videoconferencing is old hat. We've been using it to teach
> languages for a year and a half now; the software is free (NetMeeting, by
> Microsoft), so all users need is a computer with internet access, a webca=
m
> (=A3 70 - =A3 90 in the UK), and a headset with a microphone (=A3 5 in th=
e UK).
> What amazes me personally is not the fact that it's around, but that so f=
ew
> people know about it and use it - so thanks for spreading the word! It
> really is a viable alternative to dedicated videoconferencing systems or
> even just long-distance telephone calls.
>
> Oh, on similar lines to using them for human medicine - we're working on =
a
> project with an international association of vets; they've been using
> NetMeeting for some time to help communicate globally during outbreaks of
> life-threatening diseases which can spread to humans, such as foot-and-mo=
uth
> disease and others.