Healthcare Services Use BlueJeans by Verizon to Accelerate Telehealth

BlueJeans by Verizon announced that customers including the University of Louisville, Amicus Therapeutics, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust are deploying BlueJeans to drive healthcare transformation. Using BlueJeans video conferencing for telehealth services, patient-to-family communication, internal collaboration, education and patient advisory boards, hospitals, healthcare and life sciences organizations are able to help improve patient outcomes through providing care remotely in a manner that helps support adherence to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or similar patient privacy requirements. 

According to Frost & Sullivan, the “demand for telehealth will soar by 64.3% in the US in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts the practice of medicine and the delivery of healthcare.” In an effort to keep practitioners and patients safe during this global public health crisis without sacrificing quality of care, healthcare organizations are having to rethink traditional service models and critically assess modern technology to improve patient health remotely—with the need for secure, enterprise-grade telemedicine solutions becoming a priority. The BlueJeans platform can transform the way hospitals and health systems operate, innovate, and deliver care to patients as we look toward the future of healthcare. 

Opened as the Louisville Medical Institute in 1837, the University of Louisville School of Medicine is one of the oldest medical schools in North America and the 9th oldest in the United States. According to Tim Bickel, Certified TeleHealth Program Manager and Certified Medical Manager of the University of Louisville, “The transition to telehealth at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was not as difficult for us as it could have been thanks to our existing relationship with BlueJeans. While some of our clinics were up and running performing telehealth before the pandemic even hit, BlueJeans allowed us to make remote consultations widespread to better protect the safety of our patients, providers and staff. Furthermore, we’ve been able to continue live streaming surgical procedures straight from the operating room to our medical students who are now learning virtually at home instead of in the classroom.” 

Epic Integration for Secure Telehealth 

In direct response to customer demand, BlueJeans worked with Epic APIs to engineer a BlueJeans integration with Epic. Now in the Epic App Orchard, the BlueJeans integration with Epic seamlessly connects healthcare providers and patients into a secure video session, launched directly from MyChart or MyChart Mobile. The use of high-definition video and Dolby Voice audio improves the clarity of visual and spoken communications. In addition, with enhanced privacy measures such as meeting passwords, locked meetings, and enterprise-grade encryption, BlueJeans helps provide peace of mind for patients and providers. Initiated through Epic's Context-Aware Link (CAL) workflows, where available, this engineered method supports a variety of endpoint experiences to allow healthcare providers and patients to readily meet in a unique and secure telehealth visit over the internet—from virtually any device, time and location. 

Amicus Therapeutics is a global, patient-centric biotechnology company focused on discovering, developing and delivering novel high-quality medicines for people living with rare metabolic diseases. By conducting virtual patient advisory boards over BlueJeans, they’ve been able to pursue their cutting-edge medicines without putting patients through the risks of travel. From an IT standpoint, “BlueJeans’ ability to interoperate with different platforms and devices, either in conference rooms, computers or mobile devices—such as being able to connect Microsoft Teams with Poly conference room systems using the BlueJeans Gateway—will be an essential aspect to potential hybrid work models as we think through our strategy for safely returning people to the office,” said Gary LaSasso, Director, Collaboration Experiences & Technologies at Amicus Therapeutics. 

BlueJeans is one of a number of platforms used by Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust to facilitate multidisciplinary meetings, with the goal of providing the best treatment option for patients. According to Justin Rock, Senior Digital Media Services Technician at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, “Video conferencing allows us to essentially ‘crowd source’ the best minds in medicine by meeting with specialists from different clinical disciplines to determine patient treatments without having to physically get together. Furthermore, by reducing patient travel time, freeing up of hospital resources and increasing the overall safety of our patients, using these tools is considered a win by all.”  

HIPAA Ready Video Conferencing 

With healthcare entities seeking to maintain the privacy and security of patients’ protected health information, BlueJeans has implemented a HIPAA program and is positioned to sign HIPAA business associate agreements with its customers that address regulatory requirements regarding privacy and security. 

Through its convenient, secure high-quality experience, the BlueJeans video conferencing platform enables researchers, clinicians, and hospital staff to: 

• Virtualize treatment by providing the mechanism for meetings to facilitate medical advice to remote patients with secure, one-touch video visits. 
• Enhance convenience through delivering consultations to patients from any smart device or browser. 
• Educate residents and medical students via video grand rounds, remote observation of operating room procedures and other distance learning programs in multiple locations. 
• Alleviate IT burden by giving helpdesk staff a single resource for understanding online meeting utilization, solving problems and making informed decisions. 

  "Video conferencing has become essential for improving patient care and experiences during the pandemic and beyond," said Sampath Sowmyanarayan, President, Global Enterprise, Verizon Business. "As we look to the future of healthcare and the impact that 5G will have on a wide range of telemedicine initiatives, BlueJeans will be a transformative part of how healthcare providers seamlessly connect with and treat patients from afar.” 

  Additional hospitals and health systems that use BlueJeans for Healthcare include the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Penn Medicine and Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust.