Sometimes it takes a few years until you see the full benefits of research results. CELTIC project HIPERMED is a perfect example. When it ended in 2013, nobody would have thought that seven years later its results would contribute to a telemedicine solution which is used in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. However, that is exactly what has happened, due to the work of medVC, a Polish SME located in Poznań. MedVC has already connected 35 Polish hospitals with patients at home via its free video service STOP-CORONA, in order to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

More hospitals in Europe will follow. There are already inquiries for using STOP-CORONA from hospitals in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. MedVC is expecting also demand from hospitals in Central European countries and beyond.

The STOP-CORONA service

STOP-CORONA is an easy-to-use patient-to-hospital video communication service, which is offered by medVC free of charge to hospitals around the world. “We want to help by giving all hospitals the possibility to unblock their telephone lines, reduce the need for ambulances to go to patients, and stop patients from overcrowding the emergency rooms,” explained Piotr Pawałowski, CEO of medVC.

The service enables each hospital that registers to let its doctors see the patients using videoconferencing. The main benefit of the STOP-CORONA system is to keep the patients at home by allowing them to have audio-visual contact with the hospital. The doctor not only hears, but, above all, sees the patient. In this way doctors can initially assess the patients’ health status. Patients stay at home, not spreading the virus.

The system is intuitive and very easy to use. The patient only has to press the link on the hospital’s website to enter the system’s virtual waiting room. The solution is browser-based and uses WebRTC. Thus, no other software needs to be installed, which makes the system easy to use for less technically inclined and elderly patients. MedVC ensures that the STOP-CORONA system is secure and encrypted, and no data is being recorded.

Background on medVC

MedVC goes back to a group of engineers from the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center, Poland (PSNC), who founded the company in 2014. They had participated in the award-winning CELTIC project “HIPERMED – High Per­formance Telemedicine Platform” and its successor project “E3 – E-health services ­Everywhere and for Everybody”. Using CELTIC project results as a basis, medVC developed a commercial remote collaboration tool for medical professionals, which allows real-time audio-visual communication.