- Practice sets up video consultation appointments and patient is automatically emailed with appointment details.
- At the appointment time the patient selects a link in the email and is connected to the practice, and held in a virtual waiting room until the clinician is ready. The clinician is notified that the patient is waiting.
- The clinician can send messages to the patient in the waiting room if the appointment is going to be delayed, for example.
- When ready, the clinician starts the video consultation.
On Demand Video Consultations
- The system also supports on demand video consultation where the clinician can set an immediate video consultation without having to arrange an appointment.
- The patient is sent an immediate email with the video consultation link. The patient selects the link and is brought into the waiting room, where they wait for the clinician as before.
- Useful when the clinician has a telephone conversation with the patient, and decides it would be better switching to see the patient.
Patient Request
As part of a patient request form, the patient can specify they would accept a video call and are given advice on equipment required to receive the call.
FootFall Dashboard
When the request arrives at the FootFall dashboard, the clinician opens up patient request, and if they agree to a video consultation, selects the Video Consultation button.
Practice sets video consultation appointment
A popup appears where the date and time of the video consultation can be entered, together with other details, such as the clinician name and notes about the consultation.
Appointment is attached to patient request
An entry appears in the episode, showing the video appointment details.
List of upcoming video appointments
The list of currently arranged appointments can be viewed at any time by selecting the Appointments button on the left hand panel.
Patient email
As soon as the appointment time is set, the patient receives an email with details of the consultation.
(The word FootFall below will be replaced with the practice name.)
Patient 5 minute reminder
Five minutes before the appointment the patient receives another email.
(The word FootFall below will be replaced with the practice name.)
Patient connects
When the patient connects they are held in a waiting room.
- Test Video Call: allows the patient to test their bandwidth, speakers, microphone and video prior to the consultation.
- Leave Session: ends the consultation.
- Privacy mode: closes the video and microphone temporarily, similar to mute on a phone.
Patient sees their own video in bottom right corner.
Clinician connects
The clinician connects and the video consultation begins.
- Privacy mode: Practice has same privacy and session controls as the patient.
- Notes: The notes panel is for when the clinician has a single screen.
Clinician sees self in bottom right window.
Patient software requirements
- Operates directly through any modern browser.
- No browser plugins required.
- No App to be installed.
- No special software needed.
- Can be used by smartphones and tablets, and any laptop or desktop that have a camera, microphone and speakers.
Practice technical requirements
Browsers: IE 11, Edge, Chrome (59+), Firefox (46+).
Note that in particular IE 8, 9 and 10 are not supported for video consultations. These browsers are no longer supported by Microsoft and so pose a security risk.
Internet speed: Minimum 2mb.
The call can take place below this speed but the video quality will be poor.
Hardware: Web camera minimum resolution 1280 x 720, and monitors of the same resolution.
The camera requirement is specified by the NHS.
Microphone: no particular specification.
No additional software is required unless running on IE 11 where a plugin will need to be installed to support video.
Recommended: Dual screens, so the video can be conducted on one screen while the patient notes are on the other. In the case of a single screen we have included a section for taking notes, which can be pasted into the patient record after the call.