Disclosed herein are methods of scheduling and conducting video visits, as
well as computer architecture for providing such scheduling and
conducting, where the participants in the visit are not required or able
to interact with the audio/video equipment for the initial connection to
start the video visit. In some embodiments, participants are also not
able to interact with the equipment during the actual visit, and thus the
equipment employed during the video visit may be isolated from physical
contact by the participants. To initiate or terminate a video visit, a
data center establishes a data connection with each participant, and thus
the flow of data between the participants moves across a computer network
and via the data center. The visit may be monitored in virtually
real-time by splitting the data transmitted between the participants and
sending it to a monitoring terminal, rather than establishing a separate
connection for the monitoring.