Remote medical teletraining with the help of Vaddio PTZ

Dr. Brandon Winchester teaches his new method of ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia to doctors around the world thanks to Vaddio's PTZ cameras and live and on-demand video distribution in the cloud.

When you are not performing ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia, Dr. Brandon Winchester dedicates his time to teaching others this advanced technique.

During the last years, has traveled from his base at the Andrews Institute in Gulf Breeze, Florida, to everyone teaching healthcare workers the secrets of this new method.

However, Winchester couldn't reach as many sites and professionals as he would like.

That's why, was placed in the hands of Vaddio to develop a new model of medical education through the delivery of cloud-based solutions.

The traditional model of medical training presents several fundamental obstacles to effective education in regional anaesthesia. First of all, as Winchester said he and other instructors can't reach enough professionals each year. Spend a week in a center, Winchester might be able to proctor half a dozen doctors and nurses. And you only have so many weeks a year to move on from teaching..

Although video on demand covered this need a priori, the doctor wanted to go further so he has chosen to install multiple cameras in his office from which he broadcasts live via streaming.

Doc-in-the-box

It was the professional himself who got down to work and designed a portable video production unit that he dubbed “Doc-in-the-box” (DITB).

Winchester opted for high definition cameras with pan/tilt/zoom control from Vaddio after contrasting different options such as prosumer models against professionals, and fixed vs. PTZ cameras.

Cost savings were a key factor in their decision “since Vaddio's cameras cost on a 25 percent less than the next closest comparable model from other manufacturers. However, the movements of those cameras are smooth, you can get a real cinematic effect. After about a year and a half of use, we are still convinced that the Vaddio HD PTZ is an excellent and affordable option”, insured.

In your installation, a switch/scaler manages video inputs from Vaddio cameras, ultrasound machine and PC, and then sends the signals to the screens for viewing in the room itself and on a PC for video capture and streaming.

The ClarkPowell control with the help of an iPad running a custom application of Crestron allows you to choose from a dozen presets with different video sources and camera angles.

To reach large groups, DITB uses the cloud in another way. Because the system is designed to use any streaming platform, users can choose between different services to access the master classes of the learned through Livestream, Ustream or DocStream.