Solutions for Veterans Affairs (VA)

Integration of camera/video source switching functionality – in order to provide clinicians with enhanced capabilities to monitor the motor functions of MS patients, Govsphere implemented camera switching functionality that allows the VITAL Tablet and VITAL MeVi app to connect to external Pan-Tile-Zoom (PTZ) cameras so that patient movements can be better tracked and monitored. • Integration with Microsoft Kinect sensor to deliver comprehensive Tele-Rehabilitation platform for MS and ALS patients. Additionally, Govsphere collaborated with the VA Office of Rural Health to conduct mobile broadband testing activities North Florida to identify how well the VITAL tablets would work in rural areas where many of the MS patients are located.

Why telemedicine with VITAL Telehealth? Improving patients’ experience of care, self-management skills and education, reaching populations of patients in non urban areas, and reducing rehospitalization rates are some of the benefits provided by remote patient monitoring (RPM) that increase the overall patients’ quality of life and decrease the cost of healthcare [1, 2]. Yet, these home and assisted living monitoring systems introduce new security and privacy challenges that range from protecting against adversaries at home to withstanding attacks over the communication links when transferring electronic medical records (EMRs) [3]. The Virtual Interactive Telehealth Application Link (VITAL) [4] platform emerges as a new technology for large-scale patient populations commended to address those challenges.

What is VITAL Telehealth? VITAL Telehealth includes three primary components: VITAL Web, VITAL Home, and VITAL Infrastructure. VITAL Web is a web-based, real-time collaboration platform and portal designed to serve as an information hub for patients and devices. VITAL Home, shown in Figure 3, is a Windows-based, multitouch tablet for Bluetooth medical device telemetry, disease management protocols administration, medicine intake tracking, and secure transmission of H.323 audio and video between patients’ tablets and physicians’ H.323 or SIP-enabled devices. VITAL Infrastructure supports multiple video call scenarios between patients and health-care providers, where calls received and initiated from the medical video (MeVi) application in the tablet are secure using FIPS PUB 140-21 compliant cryptographic modules.