Connectivity infrastructure for a telehealth platform
A secure, reliable telehealth delivery platform that also provides flexibility and scalability. The platform includes a plurality of geographically dispersed communication servers that facilitate communication sessions between remotely located patients and healthcare providers over a public communications network. The platform includes a connectivity server that manages access among users and locations. The platform also includes a monitoring server that monitors the health and usage of devices coupled to the network and proactively identifies issues requiring intervention before service interruptions occur.
1. A telehealth system, comprising:
a public communications network (PCN);
a plurality of provider access devices coupled to the PCN;
a plurality of patient access devices that can be controlled by any of the plurality of provider access devices, the plurality of patient access devices including a first patient access device at a first location coupled to the PCN via a first local area network (LAN) and a first firewall and a second patient access device at a second location coupled to the PCN via a second LAN and a second firewall;
a monitoring server coupled to the PCN, the monitoring server receives status information from the plurality of patient access devices, wherein the status information includes presence information indicating the availability of the patient access device to participate in a communication session and device status of the patient access device;
a connectivity server coupled to the PCN, the connectivity server includes a database of connectivity rules, each connectivity rule including an identification of a healthcare provider and a location of patient access device the healthcare provider is authorized to access; and,
a plurality of geographically dispersed communications servers coupled to the PCN, each of the plurality of communication servers has a network address on the PCN and is configured to establish a two-way audio/video communication session between one of the provider access devices and one of the patient access devices, wherein,
at least one of the plurality of communications servers receives and maintains at least a portion of the database of connectivity rules from the connectivity server;
the first communication firewall and the second communication firewall are configured to allow incoming communications from the network addresses of at least one of the plurality of communication servers;
the provider access device transmits the identification of a healthcare provider to the communications server and receives from the communications server a list of patient access device locations that the healthcare provider is authorized to access and a status of each patient access device at each of the received locations;
the provider access device receives a selection of a patient access device location from the healthcare provider and communicates the selected location to an optimal one of the plurality of communications servers, wherein the optimal one of the plurality of communication servers is chosen based on at least one of server proximity, server load, and network conditions;
the optimal communications server establishes a communication session between the provider access device and the patient access device at the selected location; and,
the monitoring server stores information regarding the established communication session in a reporting database.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the system includes at least two geographically dispersed communications servers coupled to the PCN, and a first communications server acts as a master communications server and a second communications server acts as a proxy communications server between the master communications server and one of the provider access device and the patient access device.
3. The system of claim 2 , wherein the second communications becomes the master communications server when the first communications server fails.
4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the monitoring server generates a prioritized list of patient access devices based on the respective health metrics of the patient access devices.
5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the connectivity server generates an interactive connectivity map based on the plurality of connectivity rules.
6. The system of claim 5 , wherein interactive connectivity map can be displayed and edited by an administrator from a remote terminal coupled to the PCN.
7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the interactive connectivity map includes a first axis including identifications of a plurality of medical providers and a second axis including identifications of patient access device locations.
8. The system of claim 7 , wherein the identification of at least one of the plurality of healthcare provider is associated with an identification of a group of healthcare providers.
9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the medical provider axis of the interactive connectivity map can be filtered based on the associated group of healthcare providers.
10. The system of claim 7 , wherein the identification of at least one of the plurality of patient access device locations is associated with an identification of a healthcare organization.
11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the patient access device location axis of the interactive connectivity map can be filtered based on the associated healthcare organization.
12. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more device health metrics includes at least one of battery life, LAN connection status, wireless network strength, cellular network connection status, device location, time of last device reboot, whether the device is connected to a charging station, whether the device is coupled to AC power, and/or software version.
13. The system of claim 12 , wherein the monitoring server is configured to detect an abnormal condition of a patient access device.
14. The system of claim 13 , wherein the monitoring server is configured to trigger a reboot of the patient access device in response to detecting the abnormal condition.
15. The system of claim 13 , wherein the monitoring server is configured to alert a technician in response to detecting the abnormal condition.
16. The system of claim 1 , wherein the patient access device periodically transmits a message to the communications server when the patient access device is not in a communication session.
17. The system of claim 16 , wherein the patient access device transmits the message to the communications server in response to a message sent from the communications server.