healthdirect Video Call delivers secure live captioning

Healthdirect Australia has added live captioning to its healthdirect Video Call service to better meet the needs of hearing-impaired patients during telehealth appointments.

Developed in-house by Healthdirect Australia, live captioning improves access to quality virtual healthcare for hearing-impaired users while maintaining the service's trusted high level of privacy and security.

Healthdirect Australia is the national government-owned provider of virtual health services, providing access to free health information and advice and connecting Australians to the right care at the right time.

The healthdirect Video Call service is purpose-built for clinical settings and is simple and convenient for clinicians and patients to use.

The rapid adoption of video-based health consultations during the pandemic has continued into this year, with Video Call consultations reaching a total of 4.4 million consults by September 2023.

"Video Call connects people to healthcare services by overcoming the barriers they may experience, such as distance, time, cost, and hearing," said Travis Hodgson, Chief Delivery Officer, Healthdirect Australia.

"We know that patients who are hearing-impaired can find it challenging to fully participate in an online verbal consultation. Live captioning provides access to spoken dialogue displayed on the screen in real-time, enabling better communication between a patient and clinician.

"We are committed to identifying and addressing the gaps in our mission to help all consumers have equal access to care," Mr Hodgson said.

Live captioning is available to all healthdirect Video Call users and is in operation at more than 11,000 clinics. Captioning can be activated by the clinician at the press of a button.

Integrating the feature into Video Call, rather than bolting on external captioning functionality, has maintained both privacy and security standards for clinicians and patients across all aspects of the service.

Security a key factor in clinical consultations

Integrating captioning into the Video Call platform complements the service's existing military-grade digital security, ensuring no data exchange leaves a digital footprint once the consult has ended.

Victoria-based provider Alfred Health, whose specialist clinics host around 200 video calls per day, was an early adopter of live captioning to ensure telehealth appointments could be both accessible and secure.

Alfred Health offers a comprehensive range of healthcare services throughout the state, running three hospital campuses, a large network of community programs and 16 statewide services. The organisation has been using healthdirect Video Call since 2017 and has 131 active clinical services on the platform and nearly 4,000 user accounts, making it one of the service's top users nationally.

"Because the information contained in captioning relates to a clinical conversation and clinical information, the security aspect is highly important to us — we didn't want it to be accessible outside the healthdirect Video Call environment," said Pru Clements, Virtual Care in Specialist Clinics Lead with Alfred Health.

"Our clinicians have embraced the captioning option for consultations with hearing impaired patients, and captioning also helps to clarify and enhance information that's shared in a clinical setting — it can make communication with the patient even easier."

Many patients have also responded well to the live-captioning functionality, including one hearing-impaired patient who is an advocate for change to support hearing-impaired consumers, Ms Clements said.

A more interactive consultation experience

With live captioning enabled, the clinician's words appear in a caption box while an open chat window is also available, allowing the patient to ask questions via chat.

The clinician will see their text being generated, allowing them to repeat themselves if the caption doesn't interpret precisely what they meant to say.

The clinician can download and share the text of the consultation with the patient and add it to the patient's record as a reminder of what was said during the consultation. However, they need to download it before the call ends since, to protect privacy, the text is not saved.