Like tentacles, the real-time Internet extends through the sharing of scenes, linking our offline and online lives to form an inseparable network. As social live streaming, online education and video conferencing have become an indispensable part of people’s lives, smart watches, smart work lights, dual recording of videos, video verification, remote consultation and other new scenarios are also emerging.
In our view, exploring the future of the real-time Internet is a process of “glimmer of insight.” Therefore, Sonnet launched a series of plans to capture “light” tour, hoping to share new scenes of real-time interaction from the perspective of the combination of scene, business and technology, and see how they “insight” and “grasp” the future light of the real-time Internet.
“Bringing famous doctors to the grassroots” has always been regarded as one of the best ways to solve the imbalance of medical resources, but the visit of famous doctors is far from a permanent solution, and it is unrealistic for famous doctors to come all the time. However, real-time audio and video can make famous doctors go to the grassroots with high frequency and remotely solve the imbalance of medical resources. In recent years, as the country vigorously develops digital medical treatment, some video consultation scenarios that need medical equipment to complete, such as “remote ultrasound”, “surgical instruction”, “remote operation training”, are also entering primary hospitals, promoting the sinking of high-quality medical resources. In the seventh issue, we will talk about how to realize remote ultrasound examination with the help of real-time audio and video technology in the medical industry, and solve the problem of “difficult to see a doctor” at the grassroots level.
Since November 2020, a county in gansu province, the county township health centers, community hospital and county hospital are launched a remote real-time ultrasound system, remote for the grassroots community, provides patients with remote inspection service, especially in the winter snow mountain road at the beginning of this year, patients cannot be reinstated to the county at the grass-roots level to see the doctor, The remote ultrasonic examination system provides timely ultrasonic examination and treatment advice for many emergency patients. This kind of medical scene is also being implemented synchronously in grassroots hospitals in many counties in China, such as Hebei and Xinjiang. Behind this scene, iridium remote consultation system from Guangzhou and real-time audio and video technology of Soundnet are playing an important role.
Guangzhou couplet of iridium degrees is a focus in the medical building and provide remote medical information service for medical institutions solutions company, in the distance of the ultrasonic scenario, the county hospital ultrasound doctors through the “degree of iridium” remote consultation system physician hundreds of miles away in grass-roots hospitals, to a more patient online “face to face” ultrasonic consultation, the consultation process, With the help of the real-time audio and video technology of sound net, the remote consultation system can realize the real-time transmission of high-definition medical ultrasound images, and doctors can make real-time diagnosis of patients according to the real-time ultrasound images. The diagnosis process can achieve ultra-low delay and high fluency.
From “iridium degree”, according to data from a county in gansu province, a remote monthly diagnostic ultrasound system at the beginning of the number of patients have from launch of 5-10 cases per month, development so far 50-80 per month, all of the basic-level hospitals physicians have quickly mastered the system used, under the cooperation of county hospital, remote ultrasound has become the norm of remote medical service at the local level.
Photo: Doctors in a county in Gansu province make real-time diagnosis of patients through a remote ultrasound system
Nie Zhengxue, product director of medical finance industry of Agora, said that compared with ordinary video consultation, remote ultrasound examination puts forward higher requirements for remote consultation system, real-time image transmission and real-time audio and video interaction. Such as iridium degrees of remote diagnosis system needs to include functions such as remote ultrasonic software, remote image, and merge with the depth of the electronic medical records, for the voice network, in real time ultrasound images in the process of transmission, real-time diagnosis would face guarantee ultrasonic images of high quality, grass-roots hospital complex network environment and a series of technical difficulties, At present, sonnet provides remote ultrasonic technology solutions for platforms such as “Iridium” with five core advantages in the industry:
1. Provide multi-stream real-time transmission: ultrasonic real-time image + video stream + audio stream
In the online mode of remote real-time ultrasound examination, sonnet provides real-time real-time ultrasound image + video stream + audio stream real-time transmission of three streams, and supports real-time scan of doctors + real-time ultrasound image two streams of video synchronous presentation. Effectively ensure the county hospital doctors in the real-time observation of ultrasound dynamic image, ultrasound scanning techniques and posture at the same time can also synchronous guidance of grass-roots doctors to operate ultrasound equipment correctly, real-time audio and video communication, to achieve the best remote scanning effect.
2. Support dynamic + static image acquisition, real-time recording + playback
In the process of real-time observation of ultrasound images by doctors, the images of certain parts are often collected in real time for real-time diagnosis and later expert analysis. With the help of the acoustic network, iridium remote real-time ultrasound system supports dynamic and static image acquisition to meet the diverse medical needs of physicians. At the same time, sonnet also has the industry’s leading real-time recording function, which can realize the real-time ultrasound image and real-time audio and video diagnosis process recording, helping doctors to analyze and learn the ultrasonic examination process through playback.
3. Real-time transmission of high-definition ultrasound images, and annotation of ultrasound screenshots
In the process of remote ultrasound examination, the definition of ultrasound image will greatly affect the diagnosis of the image results, and sonnet can achieve real-time transmission of high-definition ultrasound image, up to 1080P 60fps high-definition quality. At the same time, the sonnet solution also supports doctors to mark the questionable image parts in real time after receiving the patient’s ultrasound image, and provides image enhancement and lossless amplification functions for ultrasound screenshots.
4. Support transnational consultation and resist weak network transmission
Supported by the real-time interactive technology of sonnet, remote ultrasound can also achieve transnational consultation. The introduction of foreign medical experts. The sD-RTN ™ software-defined real-time network of sonnet covers more than 200 countries and regions around the world, achieving global end-to-end high quality transmission rate >99% and global end-to-end network delay less than 400ms. The median delay is 76ms, effectively guaranteeing the ultra-low delay experience of audio and video interaction between doctors and patients in transnational consultation.
At the same time, in the process of remote ultrasound landing in primary hospitals, it will generally face the complex network situation of health centers in remote mountainous areas. For the audio-video interaction in the case of weak network, sound network has a set of anti-weak network transmission and anti-packet loss algorithm. Combined with network detection (such as delay estimation, bandwidth estimation, and packet loss estimation), anti-packet loss technologies (such as ARQ and FEC), adaptive Jitter buffer, and network congestion control policies, the system can achieve smooth video calls with 70% packet loss and smooth voice calls with 80% packet loss.
5. XLA experience quality assurance
In addition to providing customers with stable and reliable real-time interaction technology, Sonnet also provides industry-unique XLA experience quality assurance.
In July 2020, Sonnet design defined and launched XLA, the first experience quality standard in the real-time interactive industry. Different from SLA, XLA is not only concerned with the availability and quality of service of real-time interaction, but also the quality of user experience. XLA is the first quantifiable, verifiable, and reimbursable quality of experience standard and guarantee built around the actual user experience. XLA is committed to providing high-quality real-time interactive experience quality assurance, through the standardization of experience quality to promote real-time interaction from “available” to “easy to use”, let “easy to use” become the “standard”.
Through XLA, customers can get free commitment and guarantee of real-time interactive experience quality from multiple dimensions such as login success rate, end-to-end delay, audio and video lag rate, etc. If they fail to reach the standard, they will take the initiative to pay. They no longer need to worry about the experience quality of end users, and truly feel at ease and satisfied with their use!
From the relevant technology of the “degree of iridium” director, said: “in the ring network technology support, the remote ultrasound examination system based on the ordinary optical fiber broadband bandwidth (100 m) under low latency video calls and high-fidelity transmission ultrasonic image, can well meet the demand of remote medical treatment in rural areas, let us avoid a lot of hardware investment. At the same time, doctors can quickly adapt to the browser mode based on B/S architecture (i.e. browser/server mode). Flexible, multichannel audio and video integration with medical professional images is convenient and can quickly address their professional communication needs.”
Nie zhengxue also said that the technical value of real-time interaction is not only to help developers quickly build stable and smooth online interaction scenes, but also to play social value in medical, financial and government fields. For example, remote ultrasound, surgical instruction and other scenarios can effectively make high-quality expert resources descend to primary hospitals to solve the problem of equalization of medical resources. At the same time, remote consultation can improve the examination and diagnosis ability of primary doctors and facilitate timely medical treatment of rural patients. In addition, in the medical insurance scene closely related to people’s livelihood, under the support of real-time interaction technology, medical insurance bureaux around the country have launched video remote service platforms for medical insurance system. People only need to initiate a video call to the staff through App or small program and quickly apply for medical insurance through face recognition technology.
In the future, with the country’s efforts to develop digital economy, RTE real-time interaction will continue to contribute more social value in the digitalization of life and grass-roots governance.