Sit down, plug yourself in, look at the screen. The virtual
doctor will see you now.

The future face of healthcare was unveiled yesterday, a virtual-
reality doctor’s office in a box — a dramatic breakthrough in
telemedicine, currently being trialled in a Scottish hospital, which
is set to revolutionize the delivery of healthcare.

Within the next few years the diagnostic booth could be fully
functioning and serving Scotland’s remotest communities,
transforming the way that patients in the country’s most isolated
areas can be assessed by both doctors and specialist consultants
without ever seeing each other face to face.

Using the latest advances in computer and medical technology,
doctors will be able to examine and diagnose the conditions of
patients living hundreds of miles away — monitoring a patient’s
heartbeat, their temperature, blood pressure, and carrying out a
number of detailed medical examinations without having to leave
their surgeries.

And eventually it is hoped that the virtual-reality surgeries
could be housed in dedicated booths available for use by the public
in community hospitals, community centers, and even supermarkets -
improving the triage assessments currently being made by the out-of-
hours NHS 24 service.

The system, known as “Health Presence”, has been developed by the
leading American technology company Cisco and is being assessed in a
series of world-first patient trials at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in
partnership with the Scottish Center for Telehealth and NHS
Scotland.

Currently the system is being tested in a small room within the
accident and emergency center at the Royal Infirmary with the
“virtual-reality” doctor in a separate room only a few yards away.

The first fully fitted booth is expected to go on trial at a more
remote location later this year — probably within a dedicated
medical facility in Aberdeen — but eventually it is hoped that
hundreds of virtual-reality GP pods could be used to cover
the country .

Mr James Ferguson, an emergency consultant and a leading
specialist in telehealth,…