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Video consultations from the toolbar
Video consultations from the toolbar

Start a video consultation with your patients with eConsult

Laura Perring avatar
Written by Laura Perring
Updated over a week ago

This article covers:


Video consultations from the toolbar

You can start a video call with your patients via our award-winning remote consultation platform, Q health, in the toolbar. It also gives you access to our 'click to call' feature that allows you to call your patients directly from your computer or from your device of choice through the internet.

Benefits of using eConsult's video functionality

  • Instant or scheduled HD video consultations

  • Switch between video and telephone calls easily

  • Invite patients via email or SMS and allow them to join on any device (tablet, smartphone, PC)

  • Multiple invitees possible for multi-party calls – family member, carer, sign language, interpreter, multi-disciplinary team etc

  • If you don’t have a webcam on your PC, you can use the one on your smartphone by sending an invitation to your own phone

  • Ability to take photographs during the video consultation

  • Blur background on your video call

  • Centrally funded and approved by NHS England and NHS Digital

  • Metric dashboards on usage at practice and CCG/PCN/STP level


Creating a call from the toolbar

In the 'Call' icon on the eConsult toolbar, click the 'Meetings' tab. You can choose whether to create a meeting 'for now' or for a specific 'day & time'. You can either click to see today or use the calendar icon to view a specified timeframe.

The above screenshot shows you today - you have an instant meeting that has been completed (it shows you the time you joined and then also an end time in the final column) and an instant meeting that has been scheduled but that you have not yet joined. You have options as to what to do with this instant meeting.


Create a meeting for now

Click on the 'Create for now' button to generate a meeting link for participants. You can either copy this to your clipboard to send to the meeting participants, or you can invite them directly via the email and SMS options provided.

By clicking 'Join' you'll enter the consultation room and you'll wait for anyone else invited to join you.


Create a meeting for a specific time and date

By clicking the 'Create for time & day' option you'll see the below screen where you can set your meeting description and select a time and day.

Your meeting will then show on your meeting screen as shown on the first screenshot in this article. You have 4 options:

  1. Join the call

  2. Invite others to the call (this will bring up the ability to copy the joining information to your clipboard, or to send it directly via email or SMS)

  3. Edit the meeting description e.g. to update how the meeting shows up in your meeting screen

  4. Delete the meeting entirely


In-call features

There are several in-call features that you can access from the option bar that comes up during your call (shown here before anyone else has joined). Don't forget that you can resize the toolbar window!

  • Hang up - End the call

  • Camera - temporarily disable your camera

  • Mute - temporarily mute yourself

  • Rotate - switch your camera (useful for calling on mobile phones)

  • Participants - see who else is on your call

  • Switch to video - invite your patients to join via video instead

  • Files - upload and send the participants any files

  • Blur background - show only yourself, not what's behind you


Ending a call from the toolbar

When you're finished with your call, you can click the 'hang up' button. You will be given the choice to either 'End' the meeting, which ends the meeting for all participants, or 'Leave' the meeting, which will allow other participants to continue. Video calls will time out after 1 hour of inactivity.

Once you have left the video meeting, you'll be shown a questionnaire about your experience of the video consultation and technology.


Switching between video and telephone consultations

You might have noticed that when you are speaking to the patient, you also have the option to upgrade or downgrade between video and telephone calls.

If you're on a video consultation with your patient and want to convert to an audio-only telephone call, you'll need to click the ringing phone icon.


The patient journey

Patients, carers, colleagues or anyone else invited to join a video call via SMS will receive a text message that looks like the below:

When they click the link, they'll be asked to type in their name and click 'Join'. They'll need to allow access to their location, the microphone and camera before their image appears on the browser. Once the clinician has joined the call they will wait in a waiting room until the clinician joins.

Anyone on the call can mute themselves or leave the call as they wish. If they accidentally leave, they can rejoin the call by following the above steps. However, if a call has been ended by the initiating clinician, they will receive a message informing them that the call has ended.

At the end of the call, the patient will be invited to complete a simple questionnaire on the consultation and the platform.


If you have any questions or you feel that this article could be improved, please feel free to give us some feedback by emailing us, pressing the emojis below or using the chat button on the bottom right-hand side of this page to speak to one of the eConsult team.

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