Western NSW Local Health District (LHD) has launched a community-based virtual dietetic service and is about to launch one to provide virtual physiotherapy services as part of its three-year telehealth strategy, which has seen models of care grow from five to 65 in the last 18 months as the LHD looks to build a 'virtual hospital' covering more than half of the state of NSW.

Using a combination of fixed cameras and telemedicine carts nicknamed 'Wallie' and 'Evie' for acute and sub-acute care and Healthdirect's WebRTC-based video call service for primary care, the region has been able to expand its service offering by taking advantage of the roll-out of wireless broadband and NSW Health's Health Wide Area Network (HWAN), which has replaced the old Telstra ISDN network it formerly had to use.