TELEHEALTH TIPS

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Getting Ready for your Telehealth call

• Make sure you try and find a quiet and private space to talk with your practitioner.

• Think about what the practitioner will see

• Ensure your space is well-lit

• Make sure your face will be completely visible without any shadows.

• Ensure you also have space to get up or move to show your practitioner things if required

• A white wall or a plain backdrop is ideal.

• Ensure you have all necessary medical information with you or you have access to them online. You can transfer files securely through telehealth.

• Ask anyone who will be around to avoid interrupting you or opening the door during the duration of your appointment.

• Ensure there will be no background noise and/or distractions. Move clutter or distractions away from the space in which you’ll be sitting. Turn phones, TVs and other devices off or on silent so you can focus on talking to your clinician.

• Surprisingly busy clothing patterns can take up more bandwidth! So if you can try and wear something simple that may help (a win for all those Melburnians who like to wear black).

• Speaker Levels should be at a level that you can hear but quiet enough so that your privacy is protected.

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Make Sure your device is charged

Keep a charger close by as well.

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Perform a pre-call Test

To do this, go to www.tools.coviu.com/precall, click ‘start test’ and follow the instructions.

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Phone Back Up if the Video Consult Fails

Ensure you have your phone charged and at the ready. In the event of a Video call failure the consultation will continue over the phone. Ensure your practitioner has your correct number.

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Optimise your Internet Connection

• Try not to have too many people using the internet during your call.

• Minimise the amount of windows you have open.

• Restart your phone if you are using your phone for the consult

• Restart your modem

• Ensure you have enough data 

• More tips here: https://www.wikihow.com/Maximize-the-Speed-of-Your-Internet-Connection

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Test Your Internet Connection

Test your Internet connection. You need a minimum of 350Kbps bandwidth per video stream. Use speedtest.net to ensure you have enough bandwidth.

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Update your Browser

Ensure you have the latest update for your web browser, whether you are using Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari or something else. Telehealth will work on the browsers of Android and iOS devices as well as computers and laptops.

 

Hardware

Ensure you have the basic hardware requirements of a video consultation. These include a good quality camera, microphone and speaker. Most modern desktop computers and laptops come with these three elements built-in.

 

For those that don't USB cameras generally come with microphones and are relatively affordable

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Do a test call

Test a video call with Skype, WhatsApp, Face Time etc. Ensure you have it functioning well before your telehealth call.

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Finally

Telehealth is new. There will be glitches with the system and most of us have experienced the frustration of a video chat cutting out all the time. We, and the developers have done our best to test the system but it relies on certain things out of our control like: the quality of internet or the quality of the device you are using. If there are some issues the consultation will continue over the phone and we hope you understand that certain elements are out of our control. 

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