Life-impacting technology delivered to Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam

[Weileng Tan (Weileng_Tan)]

Having worked at Polycom for the last 7 years, I always knew we enable great things with our technology that our customers use to do even greater things.  The Quang Ninh Department of Health deployed the largest telemedicine network in Vietnam as they saw a critical need to extend healthcare services to the rural and remote communities.

Polycom video collaboration technology served them well as Quang Ninh is located on a complex mountainous area of Vietnam, often fraught with floods.  The telehealth program addressed the challenges to have healthcare services accessible to citizens in the rural and smaller provinces, and provide training to medical staff, to ensure a high and consistent standard of healthcare quality provision across the provinces.

One remarkable application of this telehealth program came alive for me last week as we held a media and customer event in Quang Ninh province, Vietnam, where the picturesque Ha Long Bay is situated.  Some 200 medical professionals and media across the provinces were also able to attend the event as a result of our collaboration technology, and experienced its impact first hand, participating in live interactions in High Definition video. Ron Emerson, our Global Director of Healthcare also joined us over video in the wee hours of his morning from his home in Maine, USA.

“The telehealth network has completely changed our levels of service to communities in the province and reduced the workload pressures on our clinical staff,” said Vu Xuan Dien, Director of Quang Ninh Department of Health. “As an example, for diagnosis of more difficult medical cases, patients had to be transferred across large distances from regional hospitals to either the Bach Mai or Viet Duc central hospitals. What telehealth has done is provided us with that vital link to rapidly administer patient care and diagnose early symptoms,” he said.

I witnessed, while being onsite to film the application, how the surgeons were able to talk and provide counsel to another group of doctors at the remote site via a Polycom RealPresence Utility Cart, while operating in the theatre. I can’t describe that moment of pride that I was working for a company that enabled THAT!  It was a SUPERHERO moment for me.

I urge you to take a few minutes to read more about this story.  It’s not every day that an emerging economy can accomplish something like that and it’s totally admirable.

Press Release

 

[lsahoang]

Amazing! :-)