How the Royal Berkshire Hospital Increased Their Training Capacity with BenQ Hybrid Meeting Solutions

  • BenQ
  • 2021-08-31

The Royal Berkshire Hospital (RBH) had previously acquired BenQ DuoBoards to help doctors and staff improve the quality of their meetings. The interactive displays play a crucial part in their daily COVID-prevention efforts as it allows them to hold socially distanced in-person sync ups and hybrid meetings with functional teams in the RBH system. But beyond that, Dr. Sumith Perera and his fellow physicians at the Prince Charles Eye Unit of RBH have found further use for these displays.

    

Royal Berkshire Hospital | Prince Charles Eye Unit

 

The Prince Charles Eye Unit based in Windsor is a special branch of the Royal Berkshire Hospital that provides treatment, emergency services, and surgery for patients with eye problems.

Face-to-face mentorship

On top of his daily duties as a cataract surgeon and consultant ophthalmologist, Dr. Perera also mentors several batches of ophthalmic specialist trainees. These students, who range from year one to seven (ST1-ST7), regularly consult with him regarding patient status and other hospital matters.

“We normally host training sessions where we discuss ongoing cases, recent developments in the management of different eye conditions, surgical techniques, and patient selection for certain procedures,” explains Dr. Perera.

Prior to using the DuoBoards, these sessions, although very helpful, were significantly limited. For one, meetings were done face to face. This meant that only the trainees who were physically present got to raise their questions and receive answers in real time. Second, when there were topics that required thorough explanations from specialists based elsewhere, these guest mentors had to allocate time to travel so they could be physically present to teach.

“Remote teaching has enabled us to reach a wider audience. Trainees can always join and participate from wherever they are.”

Specialists and trainees use the DuoBoard for hybrid training sessions

Extending the reach of knowledge sharing

As with their regular operational staff meetings, Dr. Perera now uses the DuoBoard for training sessions. With COVID measures still very much in effect, social distancing can be maintained when trainees are in the same room as him. This is because the DuoBoard is a large-format 4K display, meaning that whatever Dr. Perera presents on screen is clearly visible from anywhere in the meeting room.

Dr. Perera can now extend the reach of these sessions to trainees based in different hospitals. He can also invite other specialists to join them via video conferencing. They are able to utilize the RBH-prescribed Microsoft Teams for video calls thanks to the BenQ slot-in PC installed on the display.

BenQ solutions at RBH

  • DuoBoard 65" corporate interactive displays
  • IE1004-B Intel® Core™ i7 OPS slot-in PCs
  • DVY22 smart 4K conference cameras
  • WDR02U Wi-Fi Bluetooth USB adapters
“Using the DuoBoard has facilitated better interaction and active participation between attendees. You can see that they’re very enthusiastic to learn.”

“Remote teaching has enabled us to reach a wider audience,” explains Dr. Perera. “Trainees can always join and participate from wherever they are. This is also true for presenters, who are normally very busy individuals. Allowing them to remotely present eliminates the need for them to travel.”

Dr. Perera also makes heavy use of the display’s on-screen annotation and wireless presentation features. He normally wirelessly shares his screen from his notebook onto the interactive display, where he then highlights crucial details for his students. The high-quality optics of the conference camera paired with the 4K UHD display produce crystal-clear images that allow participants joining remotely to easily see and follow the points being made.

“We hold these training sessions once a week, and they last for around an hour and a half to two hours,” says Dr. Perera. “Using the DuoBoard has facilitated better interaction and active participation between attendees. You can see that they’re very enthusiastic to learn.”