An overlooked aspect of Cisco’s announcement yesterday of its new collaboration portfolio is tighter integration between the company’s telepresence and unified communications product lines. Collaboration tools are far more valuable—both from the vendor and customer perspectives—as part of an integrated strategy rather than as stand-alone solutions.
So far, telepresence has been largely limited to scheduled sessions and has had little integration with unified communications. The real benefit of unified communications is that it enables spontaneous encounters. Unified communications leverages presence (not to be confused with telepresence). Presence lets colleagues find each other, view each other’s availability on “buddy” lists or corporate directories and connect spontaneously through instant messaging, voice, web conferencing or videoconferencing. It’s also possible to do 1-click escalation from one mode to another.
The capability to connect spontaneously is essential in supporting the cultural shift to real-time collaboration. As I describe in The Culture of Collaboration book, the move towards collaborative business models is about shifting from the pass-along approach to work to “do it now together.” So as telepresence becomes integrated with unified communications, users will be able to escalate on the fly from IM, voice, and web conferencing to telepresence.
Cisco’s new TelePresence Expert on Demand integrates the immersive experience of telepresence with call handling features of unified communications. The product is optimized for business-to-consumer scenarios. A bank branch customer interested in a specialized loan investment or comprehensive relationship can connect instantly with the right expert (read salesperson) in a remote location. Patients at a regional medical clinic can gain access to specialist doctors. “The customer feels as if he or she is sitting across the desk from the expert,” notes Chris Thompson, senior director of marketing for Cisco’s unified communications group.
Using telepresence in this way is new and will provide many opportunities. However, the concept of expert on demand using video seems newer than it is. After a discussion last week with Chris Thompson about Cisco's upcoming announcement and uses for Cisco TelePresence Expert on Demand, I flipped through a book I wrote that was published in 1996 called Personal Videoconferencing. The book describes a broad range of uses for videoconferencing including the expert-on-demand model that Cisco is now marketing for telepresence. Experts I wrote about ranged from financial specialists to doctors to educators. At the time, US Bank, Huntington Bancshares and Citibank were conducting pilot programs using video banking kiosks linking customers with financial product specialists.
Telemedicine typically uses real-time video communications to link doctors with patients, doctors with doctors, and other health professionals with doctors and patients. As part of extensive research into telemedicine I began conducting in the 1990’s, I spent time with telehome nurses who deliver expertise to patients via video. While telepresence is currently cost-prohibitive for most home use, the technology could be used in nursing homes and care centers. Here’s a link to a column I wrote in 1997 on telehome healthcare for Telemedicine Today magazine.
Telemedicine can extend medical specialties to underserved populations including rural areas, developing countries and prisons. Considering that a drawback of telemedicine is the sub-optimal virtual environment of standard videoconferencing, telepresence could significantly enhance the experience for both patients and doctors.
While researching telemedicine in 1999, I visited Pelican Bay State Prison, a maximum security facility which houses California’s most violent criminal offenders. Pelican Bay is in Crescent City, California, a rural community where there is a real shortage of doctors, particularly specialists. Because many of California’s prisons are in underserved areas, the California Department of Corrections began using telemedicine in the late 1990’s to link doctors with inmates. Gastroenterologists, psychiatrists and other specialists saw patients at prisons throughout California via video from a telemedicine services center in Sacramento. Primary care doctors were on site with the patients. Telepresence could have enhanced these consultations.
