TCS Demos WebRTC-based Telemedia Solution

Perspective

TCS Demos WebRTC-based Telemedia Solution

By Rich Tehrani, Group Editor-in-Chief, TMC  |  April 14, 2015

Customer service is about more than just call centers. It’s about every interaction and experience customers have with all the people and organizations with which they do business – even their doctors.


TCS had a wealth of interesting news at Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) last month in Barcelona. Probably the most interesting was its VirtuMedix solution, which is a HIPAA-compliant virtual telemedicine solution allowing doctors and patients to securely communicate in order to minimize the need for in-person visits. In a live demo they showed me how a patient could get added to a queue after paying a fee for service and the doctor could then choose to take the audio or video call. From that point they communicate via WebRTC and can share photos if needed, of a rash for example.

The doctor has a fully integrated portal which links to billing and prescription systems, and patients for their part get help entering their malady as the system is prepopulated with popular ailments.

In all, this is a very slick solution – they even have an integrated refund, which can be sent to patients if it is deemed they are better off going to the emergency room after all.

TCS is also working on connected car solutions – helping to harden the solutions to prevent buffer overruns and other issues that could be exploited by hackers. Penetration testing via range checks is one of the ways they do this. Long-time spokesperson for the company, Tim Lorello, explains they also work to find problems that could be exploited such as a denial of service attack, which could lock the brakes.

Finally they discussed a new location-based service that has higher levels of accuracy and authenticity as they eliminate potentially fraudulent readings. This solution can be useful for credit card companies that want to be sure you are at home, work or at a location where a charge is being attempted. Also, this type of solution has uses in gambling where geographic restrictions might apply.

In all, this is a nice expansion into other areas for TCS - we've known them for years as leaders in GPS, SMS and 911 and now they are showing they have added value to connected vehicles and medicine.

As CUSTOMER’s Executive Editor Paula Bernier (News - Alert) reported last year, TCS also has been talking recently about trusted location. One of TCS’s initiatives on this front involves its work to provide customers with what it calls a trust score.

Because today’s smartphones are becoming more open, it’s become easier for others to spoof their information and location, Lorello told CUSTOMER in an interview last September. So it’s important not just to know the location of a phone, but also to know it’s accurate. To enable that, TCS wants to deliver a trust score.

Generating a trust score involves a process that first looks at indicators that an endpoint may have been tampered with, can leverage a device’s sensors to check out its surroundings, and can use other available information. It combines and analyzes that data to generate a trust score, which the application can then evaluate to decide if trust is high enough to allow the transaction.

Location is, of course, also a key concern when it comes to emergency services.

At last year’s CTIA (News - Alert), TCS did a demonstration with Cisco to address in-building location for such applications. The demo involved Cisco’s Wi-Fi access points, which can sense if devices are trying to get access to them – whether those devices are in the same building or nearby. Cisco’s (News - Alert) APs also can do a form of triangulation to pinpoint the location of devices, Lorello says. TCS technology can interrogate the Cisco AP network to ask if it sees the location of the device and understands where it is in the building. The TCS GEM (News - Alert) 911 cloud-based web browser technology in this case acts as the intermediary between the Cisco network and the PSAP.




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
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