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Video Conferencing Resuscitates Hospitals' Interpreter Services: Page 4 of 12

Paras went with the Cisco products, "because we couldn't find any other products offering both video and voice IP with call-center functionality. We heard there were open source products such as Asterisk, but two years ago, Cisco had the only products that could do what we needed--delivering video to someone's desk."

Paras has used several different end-point videoconferencing systems since first deploying HCIN in 2005. "We started with a Polycom product--I don't recall its name--that had a Web camera and a laptop, with a proprietary high-quality video codex that delivered boardroom quality video," she says.

She later migrated to a Tandberg 1000, an integrated camera/VoIP unit that offered compatibility with the Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP), the proprietary protocol Cisco uses to communicate between CallManager and VoIP phones. A year later, Paras deployed Cisco's 7985 videophones, an OEM offering from Tandberg that is also SCCP-enabled. They're located in interpreter stations around each hospital.

HCIN also relies on a variety of other videophones as well as audio-only phones--seven different end-point devices in all, Paras notes. For instance, a Polycom wireless speaker phone on a rolling cart is located in emergency rooms, where it can be wheeled into a trauma bay to allow a nurse or physician and patient to talk with an interpreter located elsewhere. Dual-handset VoIP phones allow an admitting nurse and a patient to both talk with an interpreter. "A videophone might be too intrusive in a chaotic situation" such as an ER, she explains.

Finally, Paras elected to deploy an AT&T (then SBC) MPLS network to connect the three hospitals. SBC got the call because, "all of the hospitals had existing contracts with SBC, so it was familiar ground, and SBC had just completed development of a similar MPLS network for another hospital in northern California."