An industry, clinical, and academic telehealth partnership venture: progress, goals achieved, and lessons learned

The goal of this project was to develop and test a multi-application telehealth workstation with an interface seamless to the end-users. This project required collaboration among the private sector, a clinical regional referral setting, a clinical tertiary receiving center, and a university academic unit. The project applied the usability testing methodology to design and test the workstation: (1) the developmental phase focused on planning, prototype workstation development, and end-user trials in the private sector research and development environment, and (2) the operational testing phase moved the workstation into the clinical setting. The latter included training of end-users and addressing policy and ethical issues. In addition, the partners documented the goals achieved and lessons learned. The project resulted in the refinement of the workstation for clinical applications. The unique, diverse, and at times complementary goals and lessons learned by each partner are noted. Collaboration around a shared goal was a key element in achieving the refined workstation. Collaborators reported that the lessons learned will aid them as they pursue telehealth activities.