Hospital Connection and Conrail
I'll admit it; I'm new to this video thing, YouTube.
I had thought that YouTube was nothing more than a bunch of amateur "videographers" -- not professionals like Lance Wheeler, a photojournalist I knew from my newspaper days at The Catskill Daily Mail.
I incorrectly thought YouTube was just a bunch of amateur's playing around with their video camera showing us what I call their many "stupid human tricks."
But it is much, much more than that.
For example, my hobby, model railroading, has a number of model railroad club operating sessions archived on YouTube. See the Siskiyou Line's operating session
Being a huge model railroad hobbyist and a true train buff, with my own 4x8 layout in the basement, I was amazed at the number of club's that now have their operating sessions posted on YouTube. The content played right to my interests, and it was exciting to watch model railroad clubs operating sessions in action.
So, what does this have to do with health care IT?
Well, in my search for model railroad videos on YouTube the other day, I stumbled onto Hospital Connections
Hospital Connections is an idea being promoted for an online service that could link hospital patients to their families and friends. The idea, from a guy named Brenden, came about after his brother, reportedly, suffered a neck injury. The system Brenden proposes in his "marketing pitch" would feature a Webcam in the patient's room, and a touch screen display.
In theory, family and friends would log on to the Hospital Connections Web site, and then the patient could approve the family or friend to actually see him or her. This prevents any awkward situations from occurring, if you know what I mean...
Once approved, the family or friend would then be able to see the patient, and could send text messages, e-mails or get-well cards. Patients would be able to post updates on their condition, and there would be links to such medical Web sites as WebMD to provide additional medical information on the patient's condition and treatment. The system would allow for virtual visiting hours (which is nice if the virtual ones are different than the actual hospital visiting hours) and caregivers would be able to turn the service off or on, to allow the patient the chance to sleep and continue their healing process, and have some privacy during their hospital stay.
The idea, which started in 2007, comes from Brenden's pitch, which is posted on cambrian house's Web site, a crowdsourcing site.
I reached Brenden via e-mail. He said that he recently tried this system with his little brother, who was diagnosed with cancer a month or so back. So in order to connect him with his family and friends, Brenden built a website http://community.advanceweb.com/tiny_mce/jscripts/tiny_mce/www.getwellmitch.com. "It is amazing the response I got. He has had well over 5,000 hits. It has been very important to him because he is able to talk to people without spreading germs, and they are able to connect with him and follow his daily struggles and progress.
"It has been well received that the hospital is looking to set up a network of blogs for others in the hospital. They were very impressed, but also concerned, regarding issues of privacy. Originally, there were photos of Mitchell (my brother) with doctors and nurses but the hospital asked us to take that down because we didn't have written consent from everyone. Although everyone in the photos said it was OK, we decided it was not worth the fight," Brenden said.
I think the guy makes a pretty convincing sales pitch. Let me know what you think.
Now, I really need to get back to my model trains...