AI in telehealth technology: Zoom extension
In 2020, during the coronavirus outbreak, Zoom gained increased momentum and over 2 million active users. To date, in 2024, Zoom powers 183 thousand corporate customers and enjoys a large market share of 65%.
In 2022, Forrester reported that integrating Zoom’s unified communications platform helps organizations:
- Facilitate productivity by adding 52 minutes of productivity per employee per week
- Save millions every year by eliminating redundant technologies and minimizing unnecessary travel
- Improve sales cycle effectiveness by increasing the time-to-value by 70%
- Enhance internal technical support by decreasing troubleshooting times by 75%
In the healthcare segment, this trend had an even more significant impact.
Zoom Workplace for Healthcare: quick overview
Zoom enables seamless communication and collaboration, completely revolutionizing healthcare operations. Administration management, virtual appointments, treatment planning, patient engagement and monitoring – Zoom became almost indispensable across modern healthcare settings.
Since 2011, the platform’s first launch, Zoom achieved noticeable milestones:
| 2011 | First launch |
| 2013 | 1 million active users |
| 2014 | Sequoia Capital, Horizon Ventures, and Emergence becoming investors |
| 2016 | HIPAA compliance |
| 2019 | – Zoom for Telehealth launch – Epic integration |
| 2020 | – 2.2 million new users – 2.13 million new downloads |
| 2021 | – Zoom for Healthcare rebranding – New integrations including Strmr, Practice Better, and IntakeQ |
| 2022 | – New features including analytics and reporting – Cerner and Allscripts compatibility |
| 2023 | – New partnerships including Teladoc and Meditech – Global presence (Canada, Australia, United Kingdom) |
| 2024 | – GDPR and CCPA compliance – VR & AR introduction in partnership with Varjo and Augmedics |
Zoom Workplace for Healthcare: key features
Zoom Meeting
Zoom Meeting enables remote doctor-patient interaction, which increases healthcare accessibility and quality. High-definition video and audio, data encryption, screen sharing, screen recording, and other useful capabilities almost eliminate existing limitations.
Zoom for therapists benefits:
- Virtual consultations for diagnosis, treatment planning, and follow-ups
- Patient monitoring to observe chronic conditions
- Specialist consultations to connect with professionals on complex healthcare problems
- Family involvement to ensure family members are informed and engaged
Zoom Phone
Zoom Phone enables secured telephonic communication, which expands telehealth accessibility and efficiency. Call routing, call encryption, conferencing, forwarding, voicemail management, and other essential capabilities – already built-in.
Zoom for therapy benefits:
- Telehealth hotline to provide appointment scheduling, medical advice, and support
- Appointment reminders to minimize patient no-shows
- Patient follow-ups to address urgent concerns
- Voicemail management to process patient inquiries even outside office hours
Zoom Rooms
Zoom Rooms, another feature, are dedicated conferencing environments for meetings between professionals. These provide speaker tracking and framing, interactive whiteboarding, content sharing, multi-screen support, and other conferencing capabilities.
Key benefits:
- Team meetings for convenient internal updates, care coordination, and consultations
- Administrative meetings for easy strategic planning, compliance discussions, and reviews
- Specialist referrals for collaborative treatment planning and remote second opinions
- Training sessions for technical skills training, staff onboarding, and workshops
Team Chat
Team Chat, another popular Zoom feature, is a messaging platform for communication between professionals. It provides real-time conversations, file sharing, threaded conversations, chat history and search, and more.
Key benefits:
- Care discussions for patient care reviews
- Care coordination for real-time status updates, multidisciplinary meetings, and decision-making
- Task management for patient discharge coordination, task assignment, and monitoring
- Record sharing for lab result transmission, note exchange, and medical image sharing
Regulatory background
Telehealth adoption during the coronavirus pandemic was influenced by several healthcare-focused changes. These encompassed HIPAA requirements, CMS insurance, and other state-level and international regulations, which affected telehealth technology, Zoom included.
But let’s get into the detail:
HIPAA relaxation
Before the COVID pandemic, HIPAA compliance was limiting the utilization of certain interactive technologies. Many platforms were considered regulatory non-compliant without additional security configurations – adequate access controls, sufficient audit controls, end-to-end encryption, controlled sharing, and more.
March 2020, HHS issued the so-called ‘Notification of Enforcement Discretion’ touching upon HIPAA standards. This allowed healthcare facilities to integrate communication technologies (Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, WhatsApp) into their day-to-day operations.
Medicare and Medicaid expansion
Before the COVID-19 outburst, Medicare and Medicaid placed strict limitations on specific healthcare services. These concerned patient location and settings, provider location, reimbursement rates, applied technology, and other healthcare aspects.
During the health emergency, Medicare and Medicaid expanded their coverage for remote healthcare services. This incentivized healthcare providers towards integrating communication technologies, Zoom particularly.
Future prospects
To navigate emerging restrictions, regulatory authorities introduced several healthcare-centered alterations. These included HIPAA flexibility, Medicare and Medicaid conditions, and many other revisions that facilitated healthcare accessibility.
Telehealth gained greater momentum and demonstrated its effectiveness across different healthcare settings. Increased accessibility and convenience, decreased workload, resource optimization, patient engagement – telehealth quickly became indispensable.
While many introduced changes were initially intended temporary, some changes have been made permanent. Talking about HIPAA guidelines, they concerned non-public-facing platforms, privacy practices, patient consent, and other critical aspects.
Regulatory authorities continue adapting existing standards, in particular those concerning:
- Data security and encryption
- Cross-state licensing
- Telehealth interoperability
- Telehealth reimbursement
- Healthcare equity and access
- Patient privacy and confidentiality
- Provider and patient consent
- Quality and outcomes monitoring
Pose detection technology transforming Zoom consultations
We investigated the scenarios and approaches to extend Zoom meetings by implementing artificial intelligence. More specifically, by combining image preprocessing, machine learning, landmark detection, skeleton modeling, and other advanced techniques.
We designed an application to streamline physical therapy and rehabilitation by embedding computer vision:
- To begin, we obtain the real-time video stream directly from the meeting
- Moving further, we handle the real-time video analysis by applying pose estimation
- The results are almost immediately displayed on the call screen
- After that, a report is sent to the attending clinician to be further analyzed
To undergo the examination and receive accurate diagnosis, the patient must follow these steps:
- Open the Zoom meeting though link
- Adjust settings including video and audio
- Join the Zoom meeting:
- Either starting the meeting by himself if the health assessment is conducted without assistance
- Or entering the meeting when admitted by the physical therapist in a face-to-face examination
- Perform the prescribed exercises
By recognizing the head, shoulders, elbows, and hands, the solution can analyze multiple indicators:
- Shoulder elevation and depression
- Elbow flexion and extension
- Arm pronation and supination
- Arm extension and retraction
- Scapular retraction and protraction
- Wrist flexion and extension, and many other parameters!
Contact us to explore how our Zoom application works yourself!
Pose estimation to extend Zoom integration: the benefits
Increased accessibility
Our application can eliminate the barriers for individuals who struggle with attending in-person appointments. These include geographic location, transportation difficulties, mobility impairments, childcare responsibilities, and other common challenges.
Reduced times and cost
Our application can facilitate better thought-out resource allocation across different healthcare environments. Office space, facility maintenance, scheduling conflicts, waiting times, throughput pressure, patient no-shows – no longer a problem.
More insights
By using artificial intelligence during assessments, healthcare professionals might obtain valuable information. That includes joint angles, posture alignment, motion range, movement deviation, and other important details.
Greater accuracy
And don’t forget precision – by applying computer vision, physical therapists also achieve greater accuracy. That means correct diagnoses, better aligned treatment programs, and, accordingly, faster recovery.
How we can help
How can healthcare providers go beyond Zoom integration to facilitate telehealth delivery and outcomes?
Abto Software designs custom, regulatory compliant enterprise-level products to empower healthcare leaders. Greater precision, objective assessment, real-time feedback and guidance, progress tracking and visualization – our AI-powered telehealth solutions can change the game.
Our expertise:
Our projects:
- AI enabled motion analysis for remote physical therapy and rehabilitation
- CV enabled jump recognition and analysis
- CV supported self-diagnosis application
- CV powered blood recognition and analysis
- Computer vision to drive medical imaging
- Computer vision to empower fall detection for video analytics platform
