GE, InTouch Health Partner on Telehealth Robotic Technology for Virtual Training

GE Healthcare's Global Education Services division and InTouch Health, a provider of remote presence devices, are collaborating on a program to help train imaging technicians and radiologists to use high-tech imaging devices. The program uses robotic technology for training with the aim of reducing the costs associated with onsite follow-up training.

Announced during the Radiological Society of North American (RSNA) annual conference last week, the program, called the Virtual Onsite Training, is a remote presence training commercialization effort that follows the successful completion of a two-year pilot. The initiative begins with establishing a total of 50 InTouch Health Tech remote presence devices in rotation at more than 200 global locations to support the technical and product training of clinicians, physicians, and technicians using a variety of GE Healthcare products. 

In the pilot, GE and InTouch Health connected GE professionals to healthcare providers in over 200 telepresence classes around the world. According to a press release, InTouch’s Virtual Onsite Training device replicates face-to-face training through an attached video monitor and robotics for two-way communication and interaction.

The InTouch Health telehealth network is a single unified cloud infrastructure that includes data centers around the globe. The network provides a regulatory (HIPAA) compliant, secure, scalable network hosting FDA Class II and Class I medical devices. 

Mario Lois, general manager, GE Healthcare Global Education Services said in a statement, “Healthcare provides technology to providers and patients around the world. The users who operate those devices are as impactful, if not more so, on the actual efficiency and patient outcomes as the product itself. Therefore, GE has made it a global priority to re-imagine its training and education solutions to help users achieve and maintain optimal skills and product usage. Our collaboration with InTouch Health enables network connectivity, hands on interaction, and an intuitive user experience for their online mobile remote presence training which will be foundational to reaching this goal.”