Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital (RCH) has moved to a WebRTC platform based on Healthdirect Australia's video call service for providing telehealth consultations with patients and remote clinicians.

RCH has been providing telehealth services to patients for almost four years, initially using the GoToMeeting video conferencing platform, and has seen growth of upwards of 60 per cent per year in the number of consultations it provides.

More than 20 of the hospital's departments use telehealth, 15 of them regularly, as part of a commitment to making telehealth business as usual at the hospital.

The new platform will allow any patient using the Chrome browser on a desktop or Android tablet equipped with a webcam to simply click a button on the RCH telehealth website to start a video call.