By 1927 AT&T had created its earliest electromechanical television-videophone called the ikonophone (from Greek: “image-sound”),[22] which operated at 18 frames per second and occupied half a room full of equipment cabinets.[23][24] An early U.S. test in 1927 had their then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover address an audience in New York City from Washington, D.C.; although the audio portion was two-way, the video portion was one-way with only those in New York being able to see Hoover.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony
It’s not super surprising that video phones were predicted in the 50s, considering they are almost as old as phones themselves, conceptually, and only lag a bit behind as actual technology.
Additionally the first cellphones were available just before the 50s, so that’s not a huge stretch either.
In 1949, AT&T commercialized Mobile Telephone Service. From its start in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1946, AT&T introduced Mobile Telephone Service to one hundred towns and highway corridors by 1948. Mobile Telephone Service was a rarity with only 5,000 customers placing about 30,000 calls each week. Calls were set up manually by an operator and the user had to depress a button on the handset to speak and release the button to listen. The call subscriber equipment weighed about 80 pounds (36 kg)[15]
I don’t know about this device specifically, since it seems a bit too specialized for plausible deniability and I’m not really sure what the regulations surrounding this specific market are, but a lot of times not being available through insurance is actually an effort to keep costs down for the uninsured and underinsured, as medical devices are regulated much more strictly than things which can be purchased by anyone who wants one, and meeting those regulations and undergoing testing and whatever else is super expensive.
All those weird “as seen on tv” gadgets are that sort of thing, where you go “who is that even for?” because they show able-bodied people using them so as not to imply the thing is a disability aid.