$200,000 Webcam

$200k is a pretty small budget in the scheme of things. It’d probably pay for a team of 2 mid level staff for a year.

It’s one of the better things to have come out of the NICU.

It’s a brilliant idea for those parents who are unable to stay in Canberra whilst their baby is in Intensive Care. There’s limited accommodation at TCH for parents and it’s very costly if a family cannot get hospital accommodation or have family/friends to stay with.

I highly doubt it will be public viewing seeing that only immediate family are allowed into the NICU.

“Should it actually cost $200k? I have no idea, but I’ll guarantee you that any decent system for a place like a hospital is going to be far more than “6 laptops and Skype accounts”.

+1

sounds perfectly reasonable costing to me for what would need to be involved.

in the latest sport news, we pay shitloads of money to sport stars to run around and kick balls – maybe we should make them pay for stuff like this instead…. 😛

Is that per annum, because a system like that would cost quite a bit to maintain and troubleshoot when the system fails, can anyone give any info on the ongoing costs, and will this be funded by the govt or come out of the exsisting budget?

This just in……stuff costs money! Sport at 11.

Seriously though…$200K is not over the top for this. As mentioned, there’s hardware to purchase & configure, networking, application development/maintainance, administration, security considerations, etc.

I wonder if this will be able to be viewed by all, or they will restrict to the parents?

A quick click on the link would have assuaged your curiosity and taken less time than typing that comment…

And that’s no doubt where the cost comes in. We’re talking about a service that requires more than “skype and a webcam”. It requires an administration interface where accounts can be created and then later disabled. It requires someone with a degree of technical knowledge to set up and administer (nurses are brilliant at what they do, but I wouldn’t want them administering a public-facing IT system any more than I’d want myself trying to heal the sick). It requires a network link with reasonable bandwidth which may or may not already be available in that area of the hospital. Presumably they’ll need somewhere to mount the cameras that doesn’t interfere with the other medical equipment in an area like that. Should it actually cost $200k? I have no idea, but I’ll guarantee you that any decent system for a place like a hospital is going to be far more than “6 laptops and Skype accounts”.

At risk of repeating something already said by someone in the mod queue, I daresay the majority of the expense will be related to making it secure. I doubt many parents will want a publicly viewable webcam feed of their children.

I wonder if this will be able to be viewed by all, or they will restrict to the parents?