Paediatric palliative care

Bensink, M., Armfield, N, Russell, TG, Irving, H., Wootton, R. (2004). Paediatric palliative home care with Internet-based videophones: lessons learnt. J Telemed Telecare 10, Suppl 1: 10-13.

Tele-tool of note: videophone.

The authors report on effective use of an Internet-based videophone to help provide pediatric palliative home care to children and their families living near Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. By trialing the system and then reengineering improvements, the authors describe their development of a low-bandwidth videophone that used an ordinary telephone line, and additional equipment such as a personal computer and Web camera. This is an ostensibly easy-to-use system but difficulties were encountered. Most noteworthy among these problems were variability in call quality—namely, audio and video freezing and audio break up. Improvements there were made in communications technology are described which resulted in much needed connection stability and videophone reliability.

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