Video telephony brings a smile to sick children
When a family member or a friend is diagnosed with cancer it’s always a sad and stressful experience. But when the cancer patient is a small child it is truly heartbreaking and a difficult time for the whole family.
These days, technology can be used to make life a little easier and less stressful for sick children and their families.
Mark Bensink, a researcher with Queensland University’s Centre for Online Health (www.uq.edu.au), has adapted video telecommunications technology so it can be used to reduce emotional stress for sick children and their families.
Mark said his video link program bridges the gaps of distance and separation and enables ‘up close and personal’ communication between family members, care-teams and the Brisbane Royal Children’s Hospital.
"We provide the family with a web cam and NetMeeting software to initiate and enable the link. We also set up a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection from their home computer to the hospital server.
"If the family needs a laptop or broadband connection we provide that too," said Mark.
Often parents can’t be at the hospital bedside of a sick child due to distance and the need to continue family life with the rest of the family.
"Being able to see each other’s faces on a video link makes a tremendous difference to the whole family," said Mark.
"Once the child is in home care, we use the system to connect families to their local doctor, nurses or specialists at the hospital. This helps to reduce the emotional stress and the cost of travel.
"In palliative care situations keeping the child comfortable at home reduces suffering and eases the burden on all family members. We recognise the critical role of parental caregivers in paediatric palliative and look at ways to care for their well-being as well as improving the child’s quality of life," said Mark.
With more and more people using broadband, video telephony is fast becoming a fantastic home care support method in other areas such as adult hospice care, and the care of the frail elderly in their homes.
Did you know...
NetMeeting is an application that enables real-time video conferencing and chatting over the internet, initiated by "direct-dialing" to an IP address, as well as whiteboarding, application sharing, desktop sharing and file transfer.
Virtual Private Network (VPN) uses the public internet to provide a secure and private connection between computers at different locations. It provides the same confidentiality and privacy as dedicated lines.