Telepresence & Video Conferencing Blog
Video communication news, uses & success stories.
2012
Telepresence Robots Expand Post-Surgical Care Into The Home
Medical telepresence continues to change how patients access health care across the United States. One of the more cutting edge developments in medical video communications has to do with post-operative care. Specifically, Children’s Hospital Boston is now sending telepresence robots home with patients in order to provide follow-up treatment after serious surgical procedures.
The robots, manufactured by a company called Vgo Communications, are designed to provide a direct link between practitioners at Children’s Hospital Boston and recuperating patients – one that eliminates the need for regular return visits to the facility.
As the video above reveals, the robots feature a five-inch telepresence display where a ‘face’ would normally be found, and this interface works in combination with a high definition camera, microphone, and speaker system in order to help doctors and nurses keep in touch with patients at home. This includes not just direct conversations in order to report on recovery, symptoms, and pain, but also the ability to provide high resolution images of surgical wounds in order to track healing and spot any potential problems as early as possible. The robot is not an autonomous device, but one which is remotely controlled by hospital or clinic staff over the same cellular connection that it uses for communications purposes.
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2012
Top 10 Telepresence Posts of 2011 From The KBZ Communications Blog
It’s the first week of 2012, which means it’s the perfect time to take a look back on some of the most popular posts of the past year from the Telepresence & Video Conferencing Blog. Let’s recap the most commented, read, and shared telepresence posts of 2011 and see what trends and interests dominated the industry over the course of the previous 12 months.
10. Use of Video Conferencing Surges Toward Widespread Adoption
This post from September was one of the first that we put together charting the growing evidence that video conferencing was about to reach the tipping point in terms of mass adoption. Driving this trend were the lowered costs of telepresence technology, improvements in mobile video conferencing, and increased interest in having employees telecommute at least one day per week across a wide range of different industries.
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2012
How Video Conferencing Professionals Used LinkedIn in December
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The holiday season often means a slow-down in Internet chatter on LinkedIn, and the Videoconferencing Professionals group was no exception. That being said, there were still several interesting conversations that took place within the group during the month of December. Cari Zoch, social media manager at LifeSize Communications (@carizoch), posted a thought-provoking poll asking members what their company’s video conferencing focus would be over the course of the next year. Mobility was the clear winner, with 23 of 50 respondents marking that as their choice, but cloud services came in second with 14 votes. Sergio Garcia, manager at Unitronics Comunicaciones, S.A., pointed out that cloud services are going to enable mobile video conferencing adoption as it pushes through to the mainstream in 2012, linking the two most popular choices from the poll.
2012
Top 5 Telepresence Trends for 2012
2012 is shaping up to be an exciting time for telepresence professionals, with many pundits claiming that this is the year video conferencing breaks through to the mainstream and gains the widespread consumer and corporate acceptance that has been growing closer and closer over the past 18 months. Let’s take a look at five of the top telepresence trends as we move into 2012 and see what direction the industry looks to be heading in the near future.
1. Digital Signage
Digital video communications – and digital signage in particular – have gained a significant foothold in advertising and campus communications (both academic and corporate). Projections for digital signage market share are through the roof, with industry spending predicted to reach $5.2 billion by 2016. The next 12 months figure to factor into that impressive growth rate in an important way.
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2011
Hot Technology Trend for 2012: Digital Signage
As we head into 2012, digital signage is proving to be one of the most intriguing video communications mediums for media companies looking to get their message out to the widest possible demographic. Video billboard networks are slowly but surely becoming a regular feature of the urban and suburban environment, with explosive growth predicted by a long list of industry analysts over the course of the coming years.
The numbers being trumpeted with regard to future digital signage expansion are certainly impressive. The Economist predicts an 8.3 percent global growth for out of home advertising in 2011, with digital signage spending doubling to $5.2 billion by 2016, while companies such as Intel project 22 million digital signs populating the media landscape by the year 2015 – a revised figure that is six million signs greater than the company’s original estimate. Independent think tanks such as ABI Research claim similar numbers, stating that the worldwide digital signage market will swell to $4.5 billion within the same period as The Economist’s projection, a figure which some media companies predict will be arrived at even sooner.
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2011
GIA Report Predicts Strong Global Video Conferencing Growth
A new report on the world video conferencing market has been released by Global Industry Analysts, Inc. The study offers not just an in-depth look at the factors that have lead to the increased adoption of video conferencing technology over the past several years, but also makes several projections concerning where the industry is heading.
The GIA report makes several interesting claims with regards to the factors that have driven a surging interest in video conferencing at both the small business and enterprise level. According to the report’s authors, a key reason for 2010’s spike in video communications sales was a “pent up” desire to implement new cost- and travel-saving plans following their emergence from the previous year’s recession. An increased focus on the advantages of harnessing a mobile workforce also dovetailed with the proliferation of Apple’s FaceTime as well as Skype’s video conferencing software, giving companies the ability to experiment with mobile video conferencing on a low budget before committing to more capable systems from industry leaders such as Cisco.
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2011
How Video Conferencing Provides Savings and Safety to the Penal System
Video conferencing technology is helping to usher in an unprecedented level of safety in the penal and judicial systems. One of the key advantages of telepresence is its ability to provide a communication experience that is akin to participants being in the same room together, regardless of the distance between them. This unique feature is helping to protect the health and security of prisoners, administrators, and law enforcement officers across the country in a number of important ways.
Transporting inmates from one part of a facility to another can be a risky proposition even under tightly controlled circumstances, but introducing an outside element to a jail or prison population (as happens during visits from family members or friends) adds greater volatility to the situation. Some county jails have begun to replace the thick glass barriers that separate inmates from their visitors with video conferencing systems that allow for just as much personal communication between the parties involved while significantly dialing down risk.
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2011
Obama Orders Use of Video Conferencing to Promote Efficient Spending by Federal Government
Reducing business travel to save money has long been recognized as one of the major benefits of video conferencing. However, a November 9th executive order promoting efficient spending made it official when President Obama ordered the following: “…to ensure efficient travel spending, agencies are encouraged to devise strategic alternatives to Government travel, …such as teleconferencing and video conferencing.”
When it comes to video collaboration, the most commonly used measure for return on investment (ROI) is savings from reduced business travel. Companies around the world have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars each year by offering employees alternatives to flying to meet with colleagues, partners, or clients face-to-face.
But reduced costs is just one of the benefits of reducing the need to travel for business.
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2011
Telepresence and Digital Signage Offer 21st Century Tools for Schools
Is telepresence technology at the leading edge of a fundamental change in how future generations of students will be educated – not just at the grade school level, but also in institutions of higher learning? As the world becomes more oriented towards visual representations of information, the chance for video conferencing and delivery systems to play a formative role in bringing a fresh perspective to learning looms large over the entire industry.
Students at Pymble Ladies College (PLC) offer an interesting example of how administrators and teachers alike are partnering with telepresence providers such as Cisco in order to create a blended curriculum that places a heavy emphasis on participatory, image-based learning. The PLC campus has embraced connectivity as part of an effort to engage children and teenagers (from kindergarten to grade 12) who have grown up in a world where mobile phones and internet messaging and browsing software allow for instant communications and easy access to information, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Pymble Ladies College has deployed an array of technologies – including Cisco MXE and Digital Signage – to enhance its telepresence strategy and create an environment where students feel comfortable interacting with digital video media.
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2011
How Video Conferencing Professionals Used LinkedIn in November
This past November, members of the Videoconferencing Professionals LinkedIn group used each other as sounding boards to help find the answers to a number of questions concerning industry strategies and technical issues. Peggy Daly, corporate account manager at MSpace, asked for a user perspective comparison of Polycom HDX and Cisco C Series technology. Rodolfo Dávila López of ICE stressed that it was important to identify the specific type of user before answering this particular question, as it was a fairly broad topic. That being said, Cisco TelePresence technology edged ahead on the strengths of its ease of use and quality of features, an opinion that was held by members such as Paul Lofgren, president of Golden Gate Networks, LLC, Mark Okern, senior network engineer – video at Enventis (@mrokern), and Florent Gasselin, video conference technician at Audio Visio Media.
The hive mind was tested once again when Mike McKenzie, national accounts manager for Kiedinger, Inc., asked for help in finding a technical solution that would allow him to send two camera images as a single video feed from a courtroom, a question that prompted a diverse range of vendor and technology suggestions. Tanju Hasanof of AMCOL also probed the group to ask for global video bridging solutions, while Wade Curtis, marketing manager at Interactive Video Solutions, Inc. (@wncurtis), drew the group’s attention to a telepresence robot designed by Bell Labs which in addition to its business applications also had the potential to serve as a therapeutic communications tool for developmentally disabled children.
Top Influencer for November
This month’s top influencer award in the Videoconferencing Professionals LinkedIn group belongs to Henry Liu, TVSS and collaboration systems engineer at Cisco (@howkliu). Liu was an active participant in many of the most heavily trafficked conversations in November, offering up not just advice but also contributing solid technical information to each discussion that he posted in.
Benjamin Hunting
KBZ Communications Blogging Team
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