Enhanced Telehealth Capabilities for Improved Patient and Clinician Experiences

Start Date

1 December 2021

End Date

7 July 2025

Project Participants

Department of Health Victoria, Healthdirect Australia, Melbourne Health, Monash Health, Monash University, University of Melbourne

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Status: Completed

Tags: accelerating adoption, chronic disease management, clinician engagement, clinician experience, consumer engagement, health information provision, health system, outpatient care, patient experience, public health, specialist care, telehealth, virtual care

Opportunity

Telehealth has become more mainstream across Australia, yet many patients and clinicians still report gaps in communication and information retention following virtual consultations. Patients often struggle to recall key instructions and medical terminology after appointments, especially those with complex conditions or from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

This collaborative project sought to address these challenges by developing practical features to enhance telehealth experiences and support better patient understanding after a virtual consultation.

Project Objectives

The project aimed to identify opportunities for to improve telehealth experiences for patients and clinicians, and co-design enhancements to telehealth capabilities that improve patient understanding of virtual consultations with these end users. The team then developed prototypes to these requirements, and iteratively tested the usability, feasibility and clinical value in simulated and real-world healthcare settings to refine the solutions.

Publications

Refereed Journal ArticlePublished 11th March 2026Using clinical simulation to evaluate a video telehealth consultation summary application
Full Publication
End-user PublicationPublished 11th February 2025Understanding Experiences of Telehealth in Palliative Care: Photo Interview Study
Full Publication
Written Conference PaperPublished 17th September 2024Challenges and Strategies of Inter-Disciplinary Research and Development: Lessons from a Telehealth Project
Full Publication
Written Conference PaperPublished 5th November 2024A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Designing a Tele-Health Solution Using Photo Elicitation
Full Publication
Written Conference PaperPublished 16th October 2024Recruiting Participants in Digital Health: Lessons from a Palliative Care Telehealth Project
Full Publication

Final Outcomes

The project delivered the Patient Consult Summary (PCS), an add-on integrated into the Healthdirect Australia Video Call platform. The app enables health practitioners to create consultation summaries with explanations of medical terminology and share it with patients during or immediately after a Video Call consultation.

The app was co-designed and iteratively refined with clinicians, patients, and carers using an agile research and development approach, and tested through simulation studies and phased real-world deployment. The project also produced technical documentation and resources to support implementation.

After successful development and validation in Victorian public health services, the PCS was scaled nationally as part of Healthdirect’s virtual care service portfolio.

Impact and Benefits

Since national deployment in December 2025, the PCS application has been accessed by over 150 organisations (nearly 900 clinics) across Australia, providing consultation summaries that can be shared directly with patients during telehealth encounters on the Healthdirect Australia Video Call platform. By providing patients with a clear record of their virtual consultation, the solution strengthens continuity of care, reduces the risk of miscommunication and supports more effective self-management. Health services have provided feedback that the application has helped improve service efficiency, and also communication and engagement in care.

The project supported advancement of HL7 FHIR within healthdirect Video Call, enabling standards-based interoperability across the clinical systems used in primary and tertiary care and strengthening its integration within Australia’s digital health ecosystem.

From a broader system perspective, the project demonstrates how collaborative research involving academia, healthcare providers, government and industry can produce production-ready digital solutions that improve access to care, strengthen patient-centred communication and accelerate adoption of high-quality virtual care models across Australia, and is a strong example of effective digital health innovation, research translation and sustainable impact.