The CN Interview: Marty Hollander, Senior VP of Marketing at Vidyo

Conferencing News: We've been hearing lots in the telemedicine space of late. What is Vidyo's new solution and what makes it innovative? Marty Hollander: VidyoHealth is an affordable scalable telemedicine videoconferencing suite that leverages the Internet and other general purpose IP networks, for a broad range of applications. By eliminating the need for a dedicated telehealth network infrastructure, VidyoHealth easily and effectively reduces costs while enabling doctor-patient and doctor-doctor video communication and collaboration, regardless of location. Until now, telehealth solutions from legacy providers were built on enterprise-centric models requiring expensive, dedicated QoS networks in order to deliver high-quality video and audio. This was not practical for medical practitioners who needed to connect with remotely-located patients and facilities. VidyoHealth uses the Internet and other non-QoS networks to deliver telepresence-quality, low-latency, natural communications. Prior to Vidyo, there wasn’t a solution on the market that allows healthcare providers to deploy high definition (HD) and low latency VidyoConferencing ANYWHERE an examination, operation, or consultation needs to take place, both from within medical facilities and at patient homes, clinics, other hospitals or physician home offices. Since it is a software-based solution that runs on commodity PCs, VidyoHealth eliminates the need for dedicated hardware. Vidyo is currently saving an enormous amount of time and money for a huge number of people. CN: What are some of the differences between this new Vidyo solution and existing, competing solutions. Why should the health community take note? MH: Because VidyoHealth uses the Internet and other non-QoS networks to deliver multi-party, telepresence-quality telehealth video and collaborative communications, it allows practitioners, hospitals and clinics to expand the reach and the types of services they can offer patients, practitioners, clinics and hospitals. This is far beyond what existing, competing products can do -- and Vidyo does it at a fraction of the cost! Other products are limited by their expensive, high-maintenance dedicated networks. They simply don’t have the reach, the accessibility and the affordability of VidyoHealth. According to Jonathan Edwards, Gartner Research Analyst, ‘Before telemedicine can reach its full potential, there is still much to be done to make it viable for widespread global use. High definition video solutions need to be affordable, secure and accessible via broadband and the Internet to expand medical reach to remote patients and facilities; telemedicine systems must interoperate with other medical equipment and applications. Solution providers that are able to successfully address these challenges will have an advantage.’ Vidyo addresses these challenges dead on. We are fulfilling the real promise of telehealth, which is to make healthcare affordable and accessible to everyone. CN: What health groups will it be targeted to? MH: VidyoHealth is excellently suited to any health or medical application that requires an affordable, easy-to-access and use solution. It is currently being used for telepsychiatry, home-health and eldercare, speech therapy, and specialist consultations, among other applications. It is a complete, end-to-end solution with a variety of endpoint options, including: HD Room Systems for conferences or auditorium events, desktop endpoints for doctor’s offices, single-click, easy-to-use access for patients at home (either on a desktop or an appliance), and customized endpoints for medical cart use in hospital emergency rooms, operating rooms or clinics. VidyoHealth brings to the physician an integrated view that includes video and images from variety of sources including medical cameras and imaging devices which can be easily connected to the system. CN: How much will it cost? Is there a service component to this solution? MH: The VidyoHealth suite includes all the features needed to deploy VidyoConferencing for telehealth providers at a cost starting at $17,000 for a complete solution that can support up to 25 users. VidyoHealth is being offered as a service by an increasing number of CSPs in the US and internationally. CN: Thanks, Marty. Continued success with Vidyo.