Sunshine Coast Health teams are expanding telehealth services, with staff now able to use the technology to remotely tap into and adjust patient’s cochlear implant devices, from the comfort of their home.
Bill Wiltshire said before receiving his cochlear implant, his hearing problems had become so severe he couldn’t even effectively speak with his family on the phone.
“I got to a stage in my life where it was pretty lonely because of my hearing, I couldn’t converse with people very well,” Bill said.
“The first time I actually met Bill, we had to use a tablet screen with speech to text, because he couldn’t understand what we were saying verbally at the time,” Telehealth Clinical Nurse Amie O’Sullivan said.
Cochlear implants have given the 94-year-old an opportunity to regain his quality of life.
However, the implants need regular checks and adjustments, and the ongoing service he needs operates from Brisbane.
“He lives in a residential aged care facility, so he would have to rely on someone else for transport – it’s a really big day out, and he does have certain health conditions that affect his travel as well,” Amie said.
The Telehealth service means he can now have his appointment with the audiologist from the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, all from the comfort of home.
The audiologist can even remotely adjust the volume and settings on his implants.
“The clinician in Brisbane actually connects remotely to the laptop and we plug his cochlear implant into the laptop and they’re able to program it from Brisbane with us there.”
Bill said he is very thankful to have the stress taken out of his appointments.
“At 94 you don’t need stress,” he said.
“That blows me away, the fact that I can sit here and talk to Barbara, she’s in Brisbane, and we can sit here and exchange things.”
Amie said telehealth is continuing to expand to new specialties, to make appointments more accessible to those who have barriers, such as medical conditions, holding them back from travel.
“It’s great working together as a state to get people the care that they need to where they are, we’re such a big area in Queensland that telehealth enables us to offer people care that they may not otherwise be able to access.”
Sunshine Coast Health facilitates telehealth appointments from people’s homes, as well as from Sunshine Coast University Hospital, Nambour General Hospital and Gympie Hospital.
If patients are interested in telehealth appointments, they should ask their clinician if it would be suitable for them at their next appointment.