Dr. Duncan Rogers:

The virtual clinic involves two components. First, there is the information that needs to be reviewed. For most patients, that is a measurement of their current vision and some sort of imaging at the back of the eye. The nice thing about that is you can have sites set up to do that throughout the region - for example, Cavan, Navan, Drogheda - where it is local to the patient. Then in the Mater you have a room which has a computer set up, a webcam, a telephone or whatever communication method you wish to use. We will communicate by whatever means the patient chooses. This is because some elderly patients do not want to have Zoom calls. They would like a nice phone call with their provider. That is enabled with sufficient Internet bandwidth in order that you can access all the imaging easily. The consultant will come in to a 15-patient clinic to review all of their virtual images and then contact the patient via phone or if it is their preference they just get a letter in the post. It is very much driven by what the patient wants. It means that those 15 patients will have not come from Drogheda, Cavan or Navan to us. They will not have o get themselves there. They will not be sitting in the outpatient clinic of a tertiary centre waiting to see a consultant when they do not need to be.

Within that virtual setting, one can start to build layers in and train up the optometrist to the top of their licence in order that they can look at the stable cohort, but still with governance from a consultant. One can be a force multiplier of consultants. Very often, consultants are expensive people to have in a healthcare system. It is about using the allied healthcare professionals to the highest level. The virtual clinic really does that. In the Mater hospital, we have a designated space, we have the IT capability ready, we have the links ready to go and the shared spaces for imaging. We are just about to tip into it. We also have consultant colleagues who have committed to providing their time to these virtual clinics.