Leveraging Teleconsultations: A Powerful Model to Address Physician Shortages in Resource-Limited and Humanitarian Settings

April 14, 2019 | 3:30 p.m. – 4:15 p.m. CDT

One of the biggest challenges for health in resource-limited and humanitarian settings is the shortage of trained clinicians and care team members. This has resulted in an increase in medical care for complex patients being provided by overwhelmed care teams with less access to specialized health care resources or networks.

In this workshop, 3 organizations leading telehealth innovation in international telemedicine will showcase how their telehealth solutions aid clinical team members in the transfer of knowledge to support hard to reach care for their patients. Through collective experience, asynchronous teleconsultations improve the quality and level of care provided in underserved communities while still leaving the management of patients in the hands of local clinical care team members.

• The Addis Clinic connects frontline health workers in remote and underserved communities around the globe to a virtual network of volunteer physicians using an app-based teleconsultation platform.
• RubiconMD democratizes medical expertise by bridging the gap between primary and specialty care through a web and app-based eConsult platform and supports technology implementation through a Clinical Transformation in Technology framework.
• Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has developed a multilingual telemedicine network to assist its medical teams often working in isolated or hard to reach locations by providing direct access to specialist advice using a web-based messaging system and store-and-forward communication.

The transfer of knowledge is the most impactful use of telemedicine on the international scale to reduce the impact of clinician shortages around the world. Through mobile application and web-based telemedicine platforms, each organization will showcase how their telehealth solutions and/or frameworks support local clinicians and care teams through remote, asynchronous teleconsultations via access to highly skilled specialist networks.

Speakers:

• Michelle Turner, Executive Director, The Addis Clinic
• Sophie Delaigue, MD, Medical Coordinator, MSF Telemedicine, Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders
• Lisa Bard Levine, MD, MBA, CEO, The MAVEN Project
• Gil Addo, CEO, RubiconMD
• Sabrina Smith, DrHA, COO, American Telemedicine Association (ATA)