Last week, the Boston Globe ran an article Virtual therapy expanding mental health care, that mentioned how two of our customers, Partners HealthCare and HealthLinkNow were using our product to provide virtual therapy sessions.
The article quotes Janet Wozniak, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who is the associate director of the Bressler Program for Autism Spectrum Disorders at Massachustts General Hospital:
For Wozniak’s patients, mainly children and teens on the autism spectrum with psychiatric disorders, simply coming to the office can be harrowing. So when the opportunity arose to take part in a pilot program for telepsychiatry, Wozniak was hopeful. She approached a few families she thought might be interested — ideally, those who lived far from the hospital and had some degree of “computer savvy.” All they needed was a computer or tablet with a camera, speakers, and Internet connection to download the hospital’s telemedicine software. Skype and other similar applications aren’t strictly compliant with HIPAA privacy rules and regulations, and so while some practitioners — like Carmichael, who alerts her patients to this potential drawback — do use Skype, MGH uses its own software.
The software cited is SBR Health’s ResourceManager.
The article also quotes Peter Yellowlees, Chairman of HealthLinkNow:
Anyone who’s used Skype, particularly for romantic reasons, knows that you can have very intimate conversations. The extra distance might actually allow more self-revelation,” noted Peter Yellowlees, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California Davis, who conducts research on online consultation services and uses video-conferencing technology in his own practice. “I’ve had many people tell me things on video that they wouldn’t necessarily share in person.”
We are proud to say that HealthLinkNow isn’t using Skype, they are using SBR Health.