Verizon Business and Visionable open connected healthcare centre

Connected healthcare is set for rapid growth thanks to its relevance and sheer necessity over the course of the pandemic. Aiming to tap into this demand, Verizon Business and Visionable have opened a technology-led centre dedicated to accelerating the adoption of connected healthcare technologies for patient-centric care.

The strategic partnership between the global enterprise IT and communications technology and services provider and the UK-based health technology company will form a single secure infrastructure from Verizon’s secure network infrastructure and Visionable’s patented, next-generation digital healthcare collaboration platform, aimed at enabling healthcare professionals to collaborate, access data and share resources.

Moreover, the Kent-based centre, supported by Capgemini and Juniper Networks, will offer visitors the opportunity to experience how technology is transforming the healthcare experience and the patient care-journey.

The centre showcases new technologies, such as Verizon’s private 5G and artificial intelligence-driven, secure networking capabilities from Juniper in a healthcare context, demonstrating the benefits of next-generation connectivity and collaboration within various healthcare environments, including command centres, hospital wards, GP consultation rooms, care homes/patients’ homes, connected emergency services and rehabilitation centres.

A dedicated collaboration hub within the space will stimulate the co-creation of technology concepts, enabling partners to work together with the aim of creating what the partnership assured will be innovative future solutions.

Within the centre’s demonstration zones, the companies will showcase patient home/care home/virtual wards that are designed to provide a digital end-to-end journey from remote patient monitoring to specialist patient support and patient-led peer-to-peer support. There will also be connected emergency services based on wearable technology to communicate with remote clinicians, and the use of video, diagnostic and data feeds to quickly share information with specialist clinicians via a connected device in the responder vehicle.

For general practice surgery, the centre will display the use of multi-screen, multi-feed, collaboration platforms in delivering informed collaborative patient/citizen care. It will also show the digitisation of care pathways for faster diagnosis and improved patient outcomes to multidisciplinary teams (MDT) collaboration. The rehabilitation centre will highlight how enabling virtual group consultations between a care provider and a group of people/patients can support post-discharge recovery.

Verizon’s existing solutions in the sector include BlueJeans Telehealth, which was purpose-built to simplify the virtual join and televisit experience and provides data-driven insights designed to offer greater access to care, improve safety and extend the reach of services available.

Commenting on the new facility, Scott Lawrence, group vice-president of Verizon Business in Europe, said: “To accelerate change in how healthcare is delivered, it is crucial that healthcare organisations come together and witness these transformational applications first-hand.

“This centre has been developed to provide a dedicated space for professionals to see connected healthcare in action, and – more importantly – work together as a community to build new applications and use cases. This collaboration will help revolutionise how healthcare is delivered.”

Visionable CEO Alan Lowe added: “The Connected Healthcare Centre will enable collaboration between healthcare professionals and global technology partners to ideate and co-create new models of care for the future delivery of healthcare services, which we believe will benefit millions of patients worldwide.”