Audio-visual communication and its use in palliative care

Coyle, N., Khojainova, N., Francavilla, JM, Gonzales, GR. (2002). Audio-visual communication and its use in palliative care. J Pain Symptom Manage 23 (2): 171-175.

Tele-tool of note: Videocamera and telephone.

The authors note the strides made in telemedicine technology use over the past 20 years and suggest that it may be valuable for use in palliative care service delivery as well, particularly for patients lacking access to medical services due to their medical conditions. They report on a 3-month trial of using audio-visual communications as a complementary tool in the care for one complex palliative care patient. Four particular benefits to using telehealth are noted: 1) providing a daily limited physical examination; 2) screening for a need for a clinical visit or admission; 3)enabling communications via lip reading by the deaf patient; 4) providing satisfactory interaction with the patient and the caregivers using this form of communication as a complement to telephone communications.

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 trailing 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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