12 Cool Tech Innovations Keep You Healthy

Sometimes it's not easy, safe, or necessary for a patient to make a trip to the doctor, even when the patient should be "seen" by a clinician. That's where Video Waiting Room from Stratus Video can help.

Powering the Video Waiting Room is the company's Video Call Center (VCC), which lets doctors route calls from patients to nurses or other clinicians in a medical practice. VCC, which supports video and audio calls, identifies the next available clinician in the practice to consult with the patient. During the telehealth encounter, the clinician can determine if a treatment or care plan is working or whether the patient should come to the office for an in-person exam. The system helps clinicians evaluate the care of those recently discharged from the hospital, individuals diagnosed with the flu, patients suffering from chronic conditions like diabetes, and even patients who've had recent psychiatric evaluations.

VCC is designed to let clinicians to work within their current patient management systems. The doctor and patient need a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android smartphone, or Android tablet to run the Stratus video phone software, called ViewMe, to make the telehealth calls. The ViewMe software is free and can be downloaded from the iTunes store, Android marketplace, or the Stratus Video website.

Doctor's offices are charged a fixed monthly fee to be connected to the Stratus Video VCC platform. Use of the ViewMe software by the patient to make video telehealth calls is free of charge.