Project Summary
Telehealth (telemedicine, etc.) has developed and continues to advance rapidly for several reasons. These include but are not limited to:
• Progress in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
• Increasing patient’s expectation and preferences, and a need for flexible models of care.
To operate effectively, health professionals of the digital age must develop proficiencies and competencies in this area and understand its limitations. Telehealth is a useful vehicle to improve equity of access and opportunity for care to patients, help solve specific health problems, and expand the possibilities of continuous training/furthering development for health professionals. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought telehealth to the fore of clinical work as initial triaging and assessment may lead to the reduction of non-urgent care allowing the OHP to concentrate on the more urgent cases The aim of this proposal is to develop and evaluate a learning experience to provide entry to practice health professions students with a set of foundational skills and knowledge needed to succeed as a virtual health care practitioner.
Outcomes from this proposal will equip health professionals with the core capabilities that are necessary to work in diverse multidisciplinary scenarios and address current and new demands in health care using ICT. The modules will provide access to theoretical elements of the state of the art in Telehealth and to generate spaces for reflection that allow health professional students to acquire the basic core knowledge to go beyond teleconsultation and remote triage. It will allow those procedures in health care to be identified that could be successfully provided through Telehealth. This will lead to the development of innovative opportunities for this model of care in the future. For example, giving them opportunities to expand activities that do not require synchronous human interaction (i.e. artificial intelligence).
However, the emphasis will not be on technology, but:
• on the ability to communicate with people
• deliver patient-centered education
• learn how to effectively adopt new technologies
• identify barriers and facilitators to care using this model
• facilitate students to work in multidisciplinary health care teams.
The course is organized in seven modules:
Module 1. Definitions of Telehealth. Telehealth service modalities. Barriers and enablers. Basic foundations on the understanding of the meaning of Telehealth. The future: what is next for telehealth.
Module 2. Technologies (platforms) for telehealth and telemedicine services. Minimum requirements necessary for its proper performance; its advantages and potential problems derived from improper use.
Module 3. Telehealth service modalities and their architectures
Module 4. Ethical aspects in the development of telehealth and telehealth care services. Cybersecurity, privacy, and confidentiality.
Module 5. Telehealth care: Standard remote assessments, records management systems, virtual home visits, tele-referrals; Communications: interprofessional and with patients (patient-centred care); including how clinicians should operate/behave during a teleconsultation; cultural competence, cultural differences in how people approach telehealth.
Module 6. Normative and regulatory, financial/reimbursement service models.
Module 7. Specific scenarios/case-studies suited to those professions (dentistry/physiotherapy)
* *The course, in its first iteration is intended for dentistry and physiotherapy students. This focus is in line with the discipline areas of the investigatory team. However, these modules will be available for piloting amongst all health science disciplines as an interdisciplinary approach to overall health care. This proposal will generate resources in two languages (English and Spanish), to update the program and to keep pace with U21 HSG students’ changes as their expectations are modified by technology. This will facilitate the nurture “global citizenship” in U21 HSG students through “innovative curriculum design and best practice in learning and teaching in the research intensive setting”, and will “strive to create a distinctive experience and resource for our students that will prepare them for life and work across borders, boundaries and cultures in the increasingly globalised 21st century society. It will also further the sharing of “experiences in comparing different national and regional approaches to higher education”.
Who’s involved?
Professor Rodrigo Mariño, University of Melbourne
Professor Damien Walmsley, University of Birmingham
Professor Patricio Smith, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Dr Rosario Garcia-Huidobro, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Dr Cristobal San Martin, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Professor John Paul Leach, University of Glasgow