Telehealth and Telemedicine with StepByStep

Telehealth refers to a system which enables the clinical management of an individual's condition at a distance or in their own home. For example, technology can enable a patient to monitor their own vital signs, such as blood pressure, pulse rate, or temperature. With StepByStep, Telehealth refers to the collection of a clients results, and the ability to update the exercises for a client over the internet.

According to the World Health Organisation, Telemedicine "is the practice of medical care using interactive audio visual and data communications. This includes the delivery of medical care, diagnosis, consultation and treatment". This is therefore more to do with consulting medical professionals at a distance. In our clinical practice we use video conferencing to enable the Speech and Language Therapists to provide therapy to people in their own homes.

There are tremendous benefits in terms of time and travel savings to be made with both Telehealth and Telemedicine, as well as the enormous clinical benefit of allowing clients to work at their own pace, in their own home, while under the guidance of a Speech and Language Therapist.

We have been using a mixture of both Telehealth and Telemedicine within our own clinical practice since 2001, and have been providing a Telehealth solution to the NHS since 2005.

The following are research papers and reports about the use of Telehealth with StepByStep with people with aphasia.

Mortley J, Wade J, Enderby P, Hughes A (2004)  Effectiveness of computerised rehabilitation (Telehealth) for long-term aphasia: a case series study British Journal of General Practice 54: 856-857

Mortley J, Wade J, Enderby P (2004)  Superhighway to promoting a client-therapist partnership: Using the Internet (Telehealth) to deliver word-retrieval computer therapy monitored remotely with minimal speech and language therapy input. Aphasiology 18:3 193-211

Wade J, Mortley J (2003) Talk about IT: Views of people with aphasia and their partners on receiving remotely monitored (Telehealth) computer-based word finding therapy. Aphasiology 17:11 1031-1056

Mortley J, Davies A, Enderby P (2003) An investigation into the feasibility of remotely delivered (Telehealth) computer therapy for people with aphasia. Advances in Speech Language Pathology, 5:1 27-36

Mortley J, Wade J, Enderby (2002)  Development and evaluation of Remote (Telehealth) Speech and Language Therapy for aphasic individuals This research was commissioned by the Stroke Association, and has implications for the delivery of therapy with reduced face-to-face therapist input.

Telehealth with StepByStep

When you implement the StepByStep telehealth solution, you enable your clinicians to securely receive the results from your clients therapy sessions. At a glance, they can see if their clients are using the therapy on a regular basis, and with the extensive reporting that StepByStep provides, they can monitor their progress with language tasks.

Once the results have been reviewed, it is straightforwards to send any updated exercises securely over the internet, so that your clients can remain under the guidance of a Speech and Language Therapist.

Patient data security is of the highest concern to us, as within the NHS, therefore we use an ISO 270001 certified environment, and will work with you to ensure that your implementation complies with the Information Governance requirements. https://www.igt.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/

If you would like any further information, please contact us at telehealth@aphasia-software.com

Below are a set of tutorials describing the usage of StepByStep with the telehealth option.

Telemedicine with StepByStep

Telehealth is great for monitoring a clients progress with StepByStep on a day-to-day basis. Minor updates can be sent seamlessly to a client quickly and easily over the internet.

There are times of course where a face-to-face session is needed. We have many clients however where it is just not practical, either because of location, or due to time constraints, to have a physical face-to-face session. At these times, we use video conferencing and remote-control software to allow a therapy session to happen in the clients own home, without us being physically present.

For video conferencing, we use skype www.skype.com . One of the most important factors with a Speech-Therapy video-conference is the quality of the sound transmission, and we have found that over the couple of years that we have been carrying out these sessions, skype provides the best quality sound. Clients are also often familiar with skype, and use it for family communication. We find that people with aphasia are often comfortable using skype long before they become comfortable to use a phone.

We use remote control software so that we can see and control when desired, the use of StepByStep. The therapy session therefore becomes interactive, much in the same way as it would be in a clinical setting. We use Teamviewer for this purpose, although there are plenty of (free) alternatives.

We have to admit that we were skeptical about using video conferencing at first, personal speech therapy sessions after all rely on interpersonal relationships and interaction. In reality (and to our surprise) we found that it was possible to maintain these factors, even when we were not physically present.

With kind permission and thanks to Simon and Lesley, we have included a video below of a typical video conferencing session, so that you can decide for yourself!