Real-Time Clinical Team Collaboration with PTT+

Better, smarter, faster. The neural network needed to power the digital ecosystem of health care is poised to transform care both inside and outside of hospital walls in traditional care settings. Meaningful data analytics positioned in real time to drive better diagnostics and intelligent operations, seamless care coordination, and integrated telehealth. This is the future of connected health care. We talk to the experts about trans transformational road maps for this evolving landscape, what's working, what's needed, and how we get there together. Welcome to health care on air presented by Verizon. Hey, guys. Welcome back from Hims twenty twenty three. We're recording in the Verizon booth. If you're at Him in Chicago. You can come see us in booth forty forty eight. We are recording from the show floor. We're talking to customers, friends, and partners. About innovation in healthcare, across the spectrum of healthcare, how Verizon and our partners are accelerating the digital evolution of health, and so I'm Really happy to have Cathy Lester back on she was on earlier to to join us from the Verizon healthcare team. And Doug Page with Motorola, a key partner of Verizon. We are gonna talk about real time communication and collaboration across a few healthcare use cases starting with the first responder pre hospital space where that real time communication is really critical. So, Doug, I'd love for you to, you know, introduce yourself. Tell us what you do for Motorola, and then Kathy will go to you. Well, good afternoon. I'm Doug Page from Motorola. I'm the channel manager. I support Verizon and only Verizon with their push to talk plus application. Great. Love that. Excellent. And I am Kathy Lester. Verizon and only Verizon. Verizon and only Verizon. We love that. Better matters. That's right. That's right. So we have I'm Kathy Lester with the Hills the Health and Life Sciences team. I run the customer co innovation programs. So looking at different types of technologies where we can collaborate together jointly to really make an impact in some of the big issues that are that are facing the health system. I'm also part of the responder community myself. So as an active EMT, and an in service EMT, I love to hear about different types of things that allow us to all work together collaboratively -- Yep. -- to keep us safe, keep us sound, and deliver that right level of care. So, Doug, talk about let let's talk about Motorola, how you're supporting the pre hospital space. What is the healthcare, you know, vision around not just this product, which we'll talk about more specifically, push to Talk Plus and and and some of those capabilities. But what's Motorola's vision around health care? Well, Motorola's focus is always public safety and and security. You know, we've transformed our company. You know, everybody knows Everybody always knows us as traditional LMR, which is LAN mobile radios, but now we're into video access control and, of course, software, cyber security and applications. This application push to talk plus provides, you know, users with expanding their network, so you can interop with LMR by also expanding usability capabilities that you can't get on a radio system. So we feel that their dedication and Verizon's dedication to public safety, as well as motorola's is a great mix. Yep. So for our audience push to talk, I think we're all familiar with it from the old next till days. I I held onto my push to talk text cell phone forever for as long as I could because it was great in the workplace. And, obviously, folks in this space are familiar that it is evolved There it is a much more nuanced, sophisticated platform and communication capability than than back in the day. But so let's talk about that a little bit And actually, Cathy, I wanna go to UNX. You're an EMT, in addition to being a solutions architect for health care, So you understand the evolution of the first responder space. So to tee up how we want to talk about this technology, how is technology evolving that role? For the paramedic, for the EMT in the field. And also, how important is stakeholder communication? So not just that first responder, but dispatch LEO, everybody that's, you know, part of that chain of communication when they're, you know, is an emergency in play. It's amazing. So one of the first things that they that that you go through when you be when you become an EMT or a first responder on this is really understanding the impact of situational awareness. Because that call comes in and you do not know where you're headed. This you you do not know a lot of what's here. I don't know the situation. I know something is not going well. I don't know a lot. What we've seen in the last few years is really that adoption of computer aided disk Right? So what we're getting is we're getting a lot more information. So when I'm rolling up to scene, I have more information at that point right before I get there. What does it look like? What am I looking for? Is there a dog that's gonna meet me at the door? Right? What does this -- We're worse. -- at the street. Someone armed How does this feel for me? I figured dog was a little less dangerous than what? You know, knuckle. What do I need? Right? So I'm looking at different things on that particular front. So when I when we're when we're setting things up through that through that system, the call always starts with dispatch. Right? And they're gonna be the ones that are gonna try and make that first right choice. But they're gathering data. Right? It's all about as much information as I can equip that responder with -- Yeah. -- when I get there. And then the the second really fundamental thing that we see is is physical safety. I mean, it's a it's a reality that's you have to if I can't if I'm not safe, I can't help somebody else. Right. So we have to have good communication if we think there's a a situation that might put me in physical jeopardy or a situation that might that might cause -- Yeah. -- cause us to be unable to perform -- Yeah. -- a line of duty type of activity. So that ability to be able to interact not only with WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT OR WITH FIRE WHO MIGHT BE ON SEEN FIRST OR EVEN STANDER BY PASER BIES THAT ARE IN THE MIX, Yep. It's about sharing. Family members and caregivers that are on the phone trying to relay information. Yeah. It's trying to give you that insight. You gotta give me the best information so that when we're walking in and meeting that patient for that first time, we have as much information as we can to act in in the in the best way possible. And so when we look at different facilities -- Yeah. -- is is the way to go. Yep. In terms of you're taking that LMR and, you know, system that these first responders and they're great systems. Right? They're really good, but they but everything has holes. So When you think of public safety, you always think of a redundancy and interoperability. This solution from Verizon provides that, but not only, you know, enhancing what they've already invested in. But now you have access to Verizon's LTE and WiFi network to be able to interop with that public safety radio, who that dispatchers listening to. So whether you're EMS, fire police, or even the general public, you can interrupt with these people and talk. AT THE SCENE AND BASICALLY PUT EVERYBODY TOGETHER PRETTY SIMPLY. THAT'S THE KEY, RIGHT, INFORMATION SHAREING AT THE POINTICARE. Yeah. Or porn in or so. So push to talk plus is the backbone, sort of the core solution of Verizon's group first response solution, which, you know, can include frontline, you know, priority and preemption. So there's a a lot of the ways that we're packaging that in. But let's just talk about the push to talk plus capability that's embedded in that because that is the core communication backbone -- Right. -- of that of that offering. How has push to talk evolved from its early days, and what kind of functionality can can users look for that are that are in the field. That they they really need to operate. When you talk about how it's changed, it's changed because now you add in a broadband network whereas before it was VHF, UHF, then they added seven eight hundred. Now, you have broadband capabilities where you have a, basically, the same feature set of a radio you can do broadband device, which is a cell phone. So think of the push to talk button, the ruggedness of the device, the application. Now, look at how it's changed, where you can do a lot more with broadband than you can do with LMR in terms of push to message. Right? So text messaging, sending pictures and files. Mhmm. You can actually have video live stream the video and have what's called situational awareness where you can share that video in a group. You can send your location from the device for any reason you can't talk. You can send your location. Then you have things like urgent calling and alerting. Well, you know, that gets priority also. So just like a radio, your rugged device has a a button, a red button, which is basically an emergency button just like a radio, you push it and you get high priority to that emergency, opens the mic, so think of something like a man down feature. Where, you know, maybe they can't talk. So, you know, a real big concern for for say nurses is violent patients. Right? Well, if you have someone who's having a mental illness event, you don't wanna say, hang calling security. No. But you hit that emergency button and it opens the mic, then you say, okay, room twenty two. And then they know, okay, we gotta show up at that room that person needs assistance. That's discreet listening. Right? That's correct. Yeah. So those are some of the features I was talking about. I think, you know, people might think, oh, it's just that two way radio capability, but it's so much more I'd love for you to talk about the dispatch capabilities of it because the ability for folks to be in groups by proximity -- Right. -- low based grouping, I think is really powerful about the platform too. It's not just the device and the two way radio piece of it. It's all of that other backbone and that's embedded in it. So what's made radio's mission critical is the ability to manage those users. Right? So a municipality has a hundred users say police fire in EMS. They know who those users are and who's on that system. You get the same exact feature set with Verizon. So as soon as you activate the feature on push to talk on a device, you have access to their push to talk portal. So their push to talk portal is where you make changes, you create your groups, everything, local control that you have just like you do on a radio system. Now add in dispatch. So dispatch, you can see all your users on a map. So think of your traditional dispatch. Now, again, this is IP paste. So anywhere you have an Internet connection, you have your dispatch. You can set up a command center. From a tablet, from a computer, a laptop, it really doesn't matter. And you're able to see all your users check-in on your users. They have what's called user check, where you you click on a user and you can see what their battery life is on their device. You can see where they are. But again, you can also create geofences. And we also have location based talk groups where let's say there's an event, there's an emergency event in this particular area, create a geofence around that event. Any any public safety person that walks into that geofence is automatically added to that talk group. So again, when we talk about public safety, one thing we always talk about is redundancy. So now you have not only your LMR network, but you have your LTE and WiFi. And now you also have the capability of controlling that network and controlling your groups and your users from a local portal. Yeah. That's it. That seems really powerful in things like maybe disaster medicine or surge types of conditions where we might have a localized event that requires us to move population from a particular area to another area, especially if we have vulnerable populations. Well, one of the things and just to pivot a a little bit that is so powerful about the the grouping. Is for a a use case that sits outside of first responders, which we've talked about a little bit, which is hospital at home. Yeah. So when we think about clinical teams now being deployed out in to home and community, but especially into the home. Whether that's home health or increasingly now hospital at home programs, which are unique, There's a lot of opportunity now to look at how we're equipping those deployed care teams with real time, communication, collaboration, the discreet listening for their safety, the ability to put them in groups based on their proximity. So Kathy, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how spill at home programs because the way those clinical teams some of those are nurses. They're even using paramedics now for hospital at home programs. But it's my understanding that they're going to deploy those folks. They have to be within proximity of that patient. Their they're on call for that patient. The the whole time they're an inpatient admit at home and being cared for at home. Right? So there's a I think there's a lot of opportunity here for some of these capabilities to kind of extend into that care environment. Your thoughts on that Yeah. It's absolutely it's a you've laid that out beautifully. So a couple things I would say with that one, when we're looking at moving things out of the hospital in into a distributed care setting, It is. It we should be thinking that I have the same access to the same nursing professionals, the same monitoring, the same capabilities, that I would in a hospital that I do at home. So it has to be a a near a near experience. Right? They have to be very Apple gang ish -- Yeah. -- to make sure that they're very very close to the same, which means if I have a nurse that isn't close, that's not really helpful. So if I need something, I probably need it you know, closer. Closer. Yeah. So it can't be far. So understanding things like where is my location? And then understanding that My care team, especially for hospital home, is gonna include not only my nursing staff and maybe my specialist that's coming through. But it's CNAs or its PT or its It's lab techs going out to draw labs when somebody's at that innovation at home. Right? It's diagnostics to grab lab. It is all of those things. So having everybody understand who's doing what, when, it's a it's a dance in a hospital. Everybody knows who's doing what function. And all we're doing is is we're saying, instead of doing it here, we're gonna do it here -- Yeah. -- and make it a much bigger a much bigger space in which to operate. So when we start thinking about things like that, if I had if you're entering in my home, my my home, that you're part of that care team, and everybody knows. Right? And you can choose if I do a text and say, look, labs drawn at eight twenty seven. Right? And you'll know that from that group, it was Cathy went and drove the labs. Right? Yeah. And so, you know, I can do that. And then you'll know what's next. Because oftentimes things are sequential. Yeah. I can't do blood. I can't do medication adjustments until I've done blood tests or I can't do this until I've done that. So finding that sequencing in in a group setting where I don't have to manage it. Because again, I don't have one nurse. Right? There's not just one nurse that's gonna do, I can't. It's too many hours and too many days to do it. And it's operational efficiency. You know, we talk about the traditional one to one communications, but this is group communications. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, when it comes to people's safety, that's that's our focus. So that's Motorola's Focus. I know that's Verizon's Focus. And that urgent calling and alerting is it can't be understated how important it is to be able to hit a button and, you know, somebody knows that you need assistance right away, especially when you're out in the field. But you also have that ability to do group communications And, you know, if you're just managing your day to day to manage, you know, where your resources are, who they are. Yep. And, you know, again, if you did that with a radio system, it'll cost you millions of dollars. Right? You're now using Verizon's network. They've already spent that money on this network. It's a tremendous network. And then you talk about WiFi as well in the home. So you're losing those two networks and you're still able to communicate and interop with police fire and EMS as per needed. So it again, it's a very, very powerful solution. It is. And I think it's great. And we start looking at care teams. Right? So right now, I can stand if I'm in an acute care setting, I can stand in the hall and yell like bansing. That will get people's attention. Yeah. People will I will get attention. But it's at this point is if I have that ability to participate in that group texting that group that group type of capability. It does also give me peace of mind. Yeah. Right? We're looking for efficiencies. We're looking I mean, as we're seeing things move home, oncology dialysis, different types of a little bit. Dialysis is another one. Is it it's a huge one. Right? And getting people out of that center in a better quality of life. But that puts a lot on on the home care team, right, which is the family. Yeah. That's gonna be Ben's family. Extending, interrupting, and enhancing. Yeah. So taking that experience or everywhere you are that experience will be the same -- Right. -- and this technology provides that. And and that's that's the hope this technology. And again, priority and say is security is our is our priority. So again, that's the most important So I'll do a funny thing as a Colorado girl, you know, we do a lot of search and rescue. Right? Big mountain big mountain country. I love search and rescue. So -- Sure. -- wilderness, EMTs, very different training set of skills. But talk a little bit about how this is working with, like, search and rescue, where I can say that I have a particular environment where I have an out of bounds skier, an avalanche type of condition because we saw quite a bit of that going through. Me personally, I think bears are bad. Right? I love the bear. But if I'm gonna go do something, I'm like, if there's a bear, I want somebody to come right now and know exactly where I'm at. Right? So talk about some things that are you seeing any use cases in that search and rescue type of ecosystem? Absolutely. So think of a location based talk group. You have a dispatcher. Right? They know there's there's this area where there's an incident going on. So they set up that geofence in that location based talk group. So all the users from EMS Fire, PD, even local users, I call them the non mission critical mission critical users, Department of Public Works. You know, utilities. People that show up to a scene to assist -- Yep. -- are now automatically added to that group to interop with each other. And then again, they can take pictures, they can share videos. So if you see that bear, Take a picture. You'll know where that bear is. Right? It's so upper windows. Right. And you seem to know as if it's the only bear in the whole area, the one bear. We see the one Exactly. So you're but but again, you're able to extend, expand, interop quickly and easily, and it's local control, which is great. I think that's really an interesting I think it's a great use case because, again, we see search and rescue in a lot of different places. It is. You know? Just more bears. Well, you guys can find more out more about push to talk plus, push to talk plus dispatch, and all of the capabilities embedded there, as well as how that layered into Verizon's front line and responder solutions by coming to the Verizon booth, forty forty eight on the him show floor. We appreciate you guys joining us today. Thanks so much -- Sure. -- for a great conversation. You can subscribe to this podcast at Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, or you can see our video versions of these on our market scale podcast page as well as on our LinkedIn pages as well. Thank you guys so much for being here. We'll see you next time.