Set up, app management, and resources

Life Lines offer a range of support to help clinical teams set up and use our secure, bespoke virtual visiting solution with the aTouchAway™ app.

First - a short module provides:

• An overview of the Life Lines virtual visiting product how it works, and how you can get started;
• A video demonstration of the Life Lines aTouchAway virtual visiting solution in action;
• An explainer on how to add new patients, invite family contacts, and how to make video calls on the app.

The module also provides a useful guide for clinical staff who have just received their Life Lines tablets and are setting them up in their unit for the first time.  

Complete the 15 minute module here

Life Lines information posters - templates

The following templates can be used to provide information about virtual visiting in your clinical areas:

• Patient bed space
• Virtual visiting - ward door alert

This page provides the following guidance:

Instructions:

• Starter checklist
• Initial clinical team set up and log in
• Setting up a family member, adding the patient & making a call
• Allowing patients to use a hospital Life Lines tablet on their own to communicate with family
• Manager Grouping Fuctionality
• Video call technique and etiquette
• Deactivating an account

Downloadable guidance:

• Planned patient admission
• Patient bed space
• Virtual visiting ward door alerts
• Setting up a family member, adding the patient and making a call guidelines
• Guidance for creating a patient on your Aetonix dashboard
• Video call technique and etiquette
• How to facilitate a virtual visit
• How to set up  group through your Aetonix dashboard and the aTouchAway app
• Guidance on an alternative method for inviting a family member to join aTouchAway
• Guidance on updating the aTouchAway app
• Guidance for deactivating patient accounts
• Guidance for troubleshooting 

Frequently asked questions

• List of frequently asked questions.

Set-up, and app management

The aTouchAway™ app enables secure virtual family visiting and virtual family updates for patients in intensive care and other inpatient settings.

The key features of aTouchAway are:

• A secure cloud-based video and audio calling platform
• Use of multiple tablet devices in the same ICU/ward or different ICUs/wards to access the patient dashboard
• Use of generic logins for tablet devices allowing any clinical team member to initiate a video call.
• An Aetonix Help Centre with extensive up-to-date articles to support with installation and operation. 
• Ability to set up a hospital-specific patient dashboard and attribute one or more family contacts to each patient (see diagram)

The diagram below provides a generic view of what your organisation may look like, assuming you have several clinical units where the ICU/ward team needs to connect to family members:

Starter checklist

1. you have received aTouchAway logins comprising: tablet logins (e.g. tablet01@stelsewhere.icu), administrative logins (e.g. admin01@stelsewhere.icu), your institutional generic password for all logins
2. your institution has already been set up on the aTouchAway cloud (if you have received your logins, this will be the case)
3. you have prepared your tablet devices by sequentially numbering and labelling them, e.g. Tablet 01, Tablet 02 etc, for reasons which will become apparent
4. you have identified a convenient location in your clinical area to store the tablet
5. you have labelled your chargers and charging cables.

If you cannot find your tablet logins, please contact lifelines@kcl.ac.uk

Initial clinical team set up and login

1. During the COVID-19 pandemic Life Lines gifted tablets to ICUs for virtual visiting. These tablets and the bespoke virtual visiting continue to be in use over two years later. The bespoke virtual visiting solution via aTouchaway can also be used on any tablet device managed by the IT service of the hospital.
2. Switch on the tablet device, if using a Life Lines Android tablet the power button is on the upper right side.
3. Enter the device passcode.
4. If using a Life Lines tablet, click on the pre-installed aTouchAway™ app. If using a hospital tablet, the aTouchAway app will need to downloaded from Google Play for Android or App store for iPhones.
5. Sign in to aTouchAway on the tablet using the tablet logins corresponding to the assigned tablet number. You will need your institution’s preset password which was provided with the logins. 
6. Your tablet is now set up.

Tip:

• We recommend against displaying the device passcode on the tablet itself nor in full view in clinical areas.
• We advise downloading aTouchAway on a desktop or laptop computer and logging in using an admin login.

Setting up a family member, adding the patient and making a call

• The setting up a family member, adding the patient and making a call guideline can be downloaded here.
• Download the How to facilitate a virtual visit guide. It provides step by step instructions on getting the relative set up, logging in yourself, creating the patient’s profile as a new user, and relative as a contact and finally being ready to make the video call

Video call technique and etiquette

We provide guidance for call etiquette including:

• optional use of “verbal” patient specific password;
• verifying who is virtually present on the call (including children/vulnerable);
• avoiding showing other patients or background information on the video.

No video or audio content is recorded using aTouchaway™. It is important to advise family members to not use their own personal devices to take screengrabs or video record the virtual family visit.

We also recommend best practice is to document in the patient’s medical record use of audio or video virtual visiting. The documentation should include who was present on the call and anything significant that happens during the call i.e., patient / family interactions.

You can download full PDFs whether you're looking for call etiquette for ICU or when on a ward.

Using aTouchAway dashboards

Members of staff registered on the aTouchAway app, will also be managers of a patient. This requires access to the dashboards to accomplish different tasks such as adding new users, grouping patients, and deactivating patients when discharged. To access the dashboards, use Google Chrome and go to http://dashboards.aetonix.com/. Please login with the same credentials that you have registered with.  Most of the tasks will be done in the ‘User Management’ section.

Guidance for creating a patient on the  aetonix dashboard can be downloaded here.

Allowing patients to use a hospital Life Lines tablet on their own to communicate with family

This function allows a healthcare professional using a tablet provided by Life Lines to select a patient from its list and “lock” the tablet into that patient’s account, protecting other patient’s confidentiality. While the tablet is in “lock” mode, the tablet can’t access any of the other patients’ accounts.

The patient is now able to use the tablet on their own and communicate with their relatives by adding them as contacts and initiating audio/video calls and sending text messages, as well as accessing their care plan, if available. When done, the tablet can be “unlocked” and moved to the next patient.

How to lock the tablet for patient use

User Types

There are two types of patient accounts in the Aetonix system:

• 'Mobile' user: patients that can use the app with full functionality and are averagely tech-savvy. The interface looks the same as the tablet in ICU.
• 'aTouchAway' user: non tech-savvy patients that see a basic user interface (that looks different than the ICU tablet’s interface) that provides basic access with limited app functionality. Clinical teams have the ability to control what the patients can do, and this user type is used mostly on Home Care/COPD/senior patient scenarios.

When creating a patient’s account in ICU, the default setting for user type is aTouchAway. We recommend switching this to Mobile as most users will be tech savvy enough to use it. See below for steps to do this.

NOTE: The Control function needs to be turned on for your organisation. Please let the Aetonix team know if your hospital is interested by emailing lifelines@kcl.ac.uk and support@aetonix.com, and we will activate it. To take control of the patient’s account, you must first ensure the account’s User Type is set as a Mobile User. To do this:

1. Go to the Creation & Token tab located in the bottom-right of the home page
2. Search for the patient and click on their name
3. In the User Creation/Edit page, select the User Type as Mobile. Click Save when done.

Once the account User Type is set as Mobile, the steps to control the account are:

1. Go to Creation/Token
2. Click on Control next to the selected patient to log in

3. You will be logged in as the patient; at this time, it is safe to allow the patient to use the tablet to add contacts/call their relatives. Patients can invite other contacts by following the same steps the tablet would normally follow. (Home > Your Contacts section > Invite a new contact).

To return to the tablet’s account (default view):

1. Go to Account Menu (top left of the screen) and click on the Log out & Return button

2. Re-log in to tablet account, by entering the password for that tablet and click Save

Warning: If the User Type was NOT set as Mobile prior to controlling the account, the account of the patient will look like the image below when controlled, and this will not allow the patient to use the tablet to call their contacts.

To exit and go back:

1. Click on aTouchAway (if there is no aTouchAway logo,which may be the case on smaller devices, click on the time section at the top-right corner)
2. Enter the password aetonix456 and click on Unlock Setting
3. Click on 'log out'
4. Re-log into the tablet account and click 'save'
5. Go through the steps above to change the User Type to Mobile and retry the Control

If at any point in this process you encounter issues or have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to Aetonix Support at support@aetonix.com and lifelines@kcl.ac.uk or by using the chat on the website https://aetonix.com/.

Manager grouping functionality

Manager grouping functionality can be used in organisations where virtual visiting is used in more than one ward. It is applied across all tablets, enables a hospital’s aTouchAway patient list to be categorised into groups and given a relevant name to reflect the hospital's footprint.

These groups are created and edited via your dashboard. You can group all tablets (patients) within the same ICU unit, and in cases where a tablet (patients) moves to a different ICU the tablet (patient) can be transferred to that group.

Guidance on manager grouping functionality and instructions to set up a group through your Aetonix dashboard and the aTouchAway app can be downloaded here. 

Deactivating patient accounts

Below are the steps to follow to deactivate a patient account when they leave the hospital. These steps are to be taken by your site’s administrator account that was provided with your tablet logins.

1. Log in to the Aetonix Dashboards at https://dashboards.aetonix.com/ On the login page, log in using one of your institution’s aTouchAway admin logins.

2. Under the User Management section, go to Creation/Token.

3. You will be presented with a full list of the patients that have been created in the Aetonix System using the aTouchAway app. Search for the patient to be deactivated using the search bar at the top, then click on the Edit button.

4. Under User Active State, choose “User is not active”. Click Save when done.

5. You will receive a warning for your confirmation. Click YES to disassociate the patient account from all the tablets in your site.

6. The patient will be marked red and will disappear from your list of Managed Users in the aTouchAway app.

Guidance for deactivating patient accounts can be downloaded here.

If you experience any problems using AtouchAway, you can visit the Aetonix Help Centre, with a number of up-to-date articles to support you with installation and operation of the software.

Frequently asked questions

What do I do if I have an issue with the tablet or sim card?

If your issue relates to:

• Connectivity/Mobile Network issues (Not WiFi)
• Lost/Stolen Devices
• Faulty/Damaged Devices

Then please call the EE service desk. Their opening hours are Monday to Friday, 8am-6pm (excluding English Public Holidays). They can be reached on 0800 079 3333 on a non EE handset or 158 if using an EE handset.

If your device has been set up correctly via the instructions on the information for clinicians page, but you require additional technical support to the above mentioned issues, the most efficient way to resolve this is to detail the issue in an email to LifeLines@kcl.ac.uk. We will endeavour to assist you in resolving this issue as soon as possible.

What do I do if I require technical support using the app?

If you experience operational issues with Aetonix aTouchAway, please visit the help centre, with an extensive knowledge base to help with troubleshooting. 

You can find more detailed FAQs relating to the app here. If your issue has not been covered here, please email LifeLines@kcl.ac.uk with details of the issue and we will endeavor to assist you in resolving this as soon as possible. 

What do I do if my device won’t connect?

If you are experiencing difficulty setting up, please visit our information for clinicians page for step-by-step instructions and download our guide for troubleshooting. If your device is correctly set-up and your issue is around device connectivity, please email LifeLines@kcl.ac.uk for support resolving this. 

What if I have 4G connectivity issues? Can I use the hospital Wi-Fi?

The tablet is enabled with Wi-Fi access and you should be able to connect to the hospital’s WiFi.

If the hospital Wi-Fi signal and 4G signal are both not strong enough to enable the use of the app, please email LifeLines@kcl.ac.uk. We may be able to provide some solutions to help with the connectivity issues. 

My tablet set up with ATouchAway is malfunctioning, what should I do?

If you are experiencing an issue with the tablets that means you are unable to move on from the start up screen, allowing you only to Power off or Turn on, with 'aTouchAway' in one corner, it is possible someone used the “Control” feature in the app but did not use it properly.

To exit out of that User Interface, and go back to the usual app:

1. Click on aTouchAway (in the top right corner of the screen)
2. Enter the password aetonix456 and click on Unlock Setting
3. Log out of this account
4. Re-log in to the tablet account and click Save
5. View the guidance on this page to correctly use this function

Is there any information on call etiquette?

We provide information on call technique, including key points of discussion between the clinician and family members prior to making the call. If you would like additional guidance on this, please email LifeLines@kcl.ac.uk.