On this episode of Test Drive, we review the Poly Studio X50 Soundbar and Touch Panel. Today we examine, deconstruct and test out this video conferencing wizard. Is it as good as they say? Is it worth the HYPE? Watch and find out!

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TEST DRIVE is Syndeticom’s monthly review series focusing on the latest state-of-the-art technologies, unexpected innovations and groundbreaking gadgets and gizmos.

We score everything against our 10 key factors of:

• Installation & maintenance
• Performance & durability
• Style & quality
• Ease of use
• Logistics & eco-friendliness
• Innovation
• Warranty
• Cool factor
• Availability
• Value

Watch more Test Drive videos on our YouTube channel.

The post Test Drive: Poly Studio X50 Soundbar + Touch Panel first appeared on Syndeticom.

The post Test Drive: Poly Studio X50 Soundbar + Touch Panel appeared first on Syndeticom.

The Syndocart is designed and built in Australia, and is an affordable solution for healthcare practices. Available in three different models, the Syndocart is fully customisable for different client needs. It can be fitted with Visionflex as an option, or with a standard keyboard tray.

Featuring an intuitive user interface for ease of use and 360 degree mobility, the Syndocart has 8 hours of portable battery life.

Infinite capabilities for essential communication.

Get in touch with us today to learn more.

The post Introducing the Syndocart: Syndeticom’s custom-built Telehealth cart first appeared on Syndeticom.

The post Introducing the Syndocart: Syndeticom’s custom-built Telehealth cart appeared first on Syndeticom.

As a result, a focus on business continuity and resilience in the healthcare sector has highlighted the pivotal role of healthcare technology and digital transformation within the space. For the health sector to meet the challenges we face now, and in the future, CIOs must review their readiness to deliver the following:

1. Virtual care solutions

Telehealth facilities and virtual care have rapidly become the norm in the time of COVID-19. Continuity of quality health care can be established by connecting medical practitioners with their patients, or with medical colleagues for collaboration and consultation.

High-quality cameras and audio-visual equipment beside the bed or over the bed allow for consultation and rehabilitation. Mobile video conferencing carts enable healthcare facilities to share the technology between beds or wards, bringing remote expertise to the bedside.

2. Communication via digital signage platforms

The information delivered via a secure digital signage platform can increase patient engagement, can put patients at ease and improve the healthcare experience and patient outcomes. Interactive wayfinding stations can help to direct visitors, patients and families to their intended destinations more rapidly, enhancing social distancing efforts and reducing time spent searching or needing human interaction.

Communication instantly improves between patients and health professionals when displaying relevant, targeted, and informative health messaging and content in each location. Every screen can be managed efficiently from one centralised platform that easily scales as your digital signage network grows.

3. Mobile video conferencing and collaboration

Video conferencing and collaboration solutions enable health practitioners to mobilise and connect with clinicians or other health professionals, regardless of location or proximity to a meeting room. Medical service providers can interact with their patients remotely and safely.

Video conferencing technology is a spatial barrier breaker. By using video conferencing, healthcare service providers can meet patients who are located far away, in remote locations or patients who are immobile and cannot visit health care facilities. It is today’s new version of house calls.

Rural patients can visit smaller local clinics, which may be near their homes, and access specialised treatment from clinicians in urban areas via web conferencing while under the guidance of their local G.P. In addition to this, doctors can use video conferencing to track the recovery of their patient post-discharge, ensuring patients are recovering as expected and receiving high-quality medical care.

4. Artificial intelligence

The integration of Artificial Intelligence models in healthcare is fundamentally going to change the global health care system – making it possible to radically redesign the medical diagnosis system and develop new approaches to medical treatment. Not only will AI improve the quality of healthcare services, but it will reduce costs for medical clinics.

AI can use electronic health records and other operational data to integrate with existing clinical workflow tools to provide real-time data. The use of AI and predictive analytics can help medical practitioners detect diseases earlier and more accurately than before. Rather than manually identifying patterns in diseases, healthcare professions can use AI to interpret patterns too subtle for the human eye to detect, directly from the data supplied.

5. Networks

Today hospital networks are growing in importance and reliability. The introduction of new and ever-more advanced medical technologies, devices or communication tools, together with stringent regulations for enhanced patient confidentiality and data security, can lead to a high level of complexity for healthcare IT professionals.

Unlike enterprise networks, hospital networks have no breathing room for downtime and so both wired and wireless networks need to be resilient and able to scale up in response to unplanned surges. They must be able to adapt to rapid adoption of modern, innovative technologies and automation.

As medical devices become network-enabled and organisations become more connected, it’s essential to put strong cybersecurity systems in place to protect networks and prevent breaches that could have damaging consequences. To achieve this, it’s essential to have full network visibility, including all devices that are connected to the network, so that they can be leveraged to their full potential in achieving better staff and patient experiences and long-term outcomes for the organisation.

The future of healthcare lies in working together with new technology. Healthcare workers must embrace emerging healthcare technologies to stay relevant in the coming years.

To explore more about the medical technologies reshaping healthcare, check out our services or alternatively contact us today. You can also download our free whitepaper, Communication in Healthcare.

The post The Future of Health Care Technology first appeared on Syndeticom.

The post The Future of Health Care Technology appeared first on Syndeticom.

Web-conferencing has been around for a while now and given the number of out-of-the-box solutions available these days, you would think it’s simple. However, the reality is that getting web-conferencing right can be a challenge.

Although the many out-of-the-box solutions that provide simple one-click meetings with screen sharing and instant messaging have simplified some aspects of online conferencing, it has caused complications in the standard meeting room environment.

It’s not surprising then that we still hear a lot of web-conferencing related questions. We thought we’d shed some light by sharing the answers to some of the most common questions we hear from the market.

1. How can I optimise my meeting rooms for web-conferencing?

Not every room is suitable for high-quality web-meetings. Things like shape, placement of doors and windows and concave surfaces can significantly impact the suitability of a space. These are factors you want to consider when designing your office spaces.

There are other aspects of a room that you can change, even when the room is already built, in order to improve the quality of your web-meetings. They include

• Optimising the lighting based on the camera location
• Using absorptive materials to enhance the acoustics in the room
• Selecting furniture that allows all participants to see the screen and camera
• Choosing appropriate wall colours to allow a camera to see the subject clearly

For more details on how to get room lighting, acoustics, layout and wall colour right, download our free AV Buyer’s Guide.

2. What camera is best?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to that question. The best camera solution depends on the size of the room, the use case, the lighting in the room and other elements.

Generally, device cameras are the least ideal option and should only be used when no other camera is available. Beyond that, fixed in-room cameras are often a good choice for smaller meeting rooms while we would recommend auto-cropping cameras or pan tilt zoom cameras for medium and large spaces.

But choosing the right camera comes down to more than just the room size. We recommend getting advice from an experienced supplier based on your specific space and environment.

3. Which microphone and speaker are best?

As with the camera question above, there is no simple answer. Again, we would discourage the use of device microphones and speakers and would recommend a headset as the minimum solution.

Beyond that, there are many options, ranging from in-table microphones and speakers to those installed in ceilings and others.

As with cameras, we recommend working with a team of experts that check out your space and recommend the right solution for you.

4. Why do many organisations still struggle to make web-conferencing work seamlessly when it should be simple these days?

That is an excellent question. In a way, we think that the countless ‘simple’ solutions that are now available have maybe made things look too simple.

In the past, video-conferencing specialists were often engaged to help with the design of meeting spaces and the installation of hardware to make collaboration with remote parties possible. Now that the conferencing device is a PC, we’re seeing a worrying trend of businesses purchasing USB microphones and cameras for all of their meeting rooms without any consideration as to their suitability for the space – or even the space’s suitability for web-conferencing. This often leads to poor sound and video quality and frustrated employees when the technology is not working as they need it to.

It’s been our experience that when designed and implemented correctly with a trusted partner, web-conferencing solutions really are simple and seamless.

Are you interested in learning more about how to design web-conferencing solutions that enable seamless communication and collaboration? Then check out our free buyer’s guide to learn more about web-conferencing as well as video walls, another popular AV technology.

Learn more and download the guide here.

Download Guide Now

The post The Top Four Most Common Questions About Web-Conferencing first appeared on Syndeticom.

The post The Top Four Most Common Questions About Web-Conferencing appeared first on Syndeticom.

Due to their size and vibrancy, video walls are ideal for engaging large crowds (either static or dynamic) and enhance audience experiences by making it easy to follow the action. Therefore, it’s no surprise that more and more organisations are interested in this solution and that we are getting asked about them a lot these days.

To help you learn more about video walls, we’ve compiled the questions we hear most and our answers to them.

1. What are the benefits of video walls?

There are numerous benefits to video walls depending on the specific use case. Overall, they are a great way to WOW, engage and inform an audience. Their size and vibrancy mean that they get noticed and are visible from a distance. They help organisations get the right message in front of the right people at the right time – the benefits of that cannot be underestimated in today’s busy world where everyone is fighting for your audience’s attention.

In addition, certain types of video walls are fully weatherproof and bright enough to be viewed in well-lit spaces, making them an ideal solution for outdoor areas.

2. What are the benefits of video walls compared to projectors?

Video walls offer many benefits compared to old-school projectors. Most importantly, video walls are much brighter, making the visual content crisp and vibrant no matter the lighting. With projectors, there are often a lot of other factors that need to align to ensure a pleasant viewing experience. From the light level in the room to the colour and material of the projection surface, the physical location of the projector and the visual content being shown, all of them can significantly impact the viewing experience for the audience.  LED or LCD video walls remove all these problems by providing sharp, vibrant visuals – no matter the environment.

In addition, video walls can be designed in virtually any size and shape, something that is not generally possible with projectors.

3. What is the difference between LCD and LED video walls?

LED panels use individual light emitting diodes for each pixel (generally 3 or 4 per pixel, red, green, blue and sometimes white).

LCD displays, in contrast, use a backlight that shines through a liquid crystal display matrix. Each pixel is comprised of a red, green and blue matrix, which can be switched on or off to allow the light to shine through. There have been many different types of backlights over the years. Currently, the backlight is frequently an LED light source. As a result, confusingly so, sometimes these LCD screens are referred to as LEDs even though they are very different to the LED panels described above!

When it comes to the viewing experience and possible applications, this small difference can have a significant impact. One important difference is that LCD video walls are created by attaching multiple standard TV-style panels together, which results in visible lines between them, whereas LED video walls are made of smaller panels that connect together and appear as one seamless display.

In addition, LEDs are generally brighter, have a better contrast level, are easier to maintain and have a longer life-span. On the other hand, LCDs offer better resolution, and the upfront cost is often lower.

To learn more about the specific pros and cons of LEDs and LCDs, download our free Video Walls and Web-Conferencing Buyer’s Guide.

4. Why should I pay for a product from a top brand when I can get the same much cheaper from a lesser-known brand?

As video walls have become more popular, the number of available suppliers has also grown significantly. New brands have popped up and some of them, especially those from Asia, offer their products at considerably lower prices. While that can be tempting, it has been our experience that in this case, what looks too good to be true, generally is too good to be true.

Often, low-cost products lead to expensive repair and maintenance work later on, which can quickly eliminate the initial cost savings. In addition, we’ve seen performance issues with low-cost products such as a tight pixel pitch (and high resolution), but at the cost of brightness, a lower refresh rate which can cause blurring when viewed while moving, and some are overbearingly heavy.

Therefore, caution is advised with new products and brands even if they are more affordable. You might pay the price in high repair and maintenance cost later.

If you would like to learn more about video walls, as well as web-conferencing, another critical AV solution, check out our free buyer’s guide. The guide provides an overview of these two communication technologies and outlines the various benefits, use cases, pitfalls and common mistakes, as well as the key factors organisations need to know about when investigating such a solution.

Download Guide Now

The post The Top Four Most Common Questions About Video Walls first appeared on Syndeticom.

The post The Top Four Most Common Questions About Video Walls appeared first on Syndeticom.