Session Abstract:
Background
Enabled by technology and IoT adoption, care delivery continues to shift from the brick-and-mortar setting to wherever the patient resides at an accelerating pace. As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, clinicians and consumers are debating how these new models of care delivery will be replaced, substituted, enhanced, or integrated with overall care delivery.
This presents us with the opportunity to take a hybrid approach to healthcare – one that relies heavily on technology, mobility and connectivity, and data analytics to enable services like remote patient monitoring, e-consultations, digital therapeutics, and more, with an emphasis on the human connection and interactions that do not require face-to-face appointments.
Virtual care encompasses a range of modalities including synchronous video, asynchronous communication through text, chat, email, portal messaging and uploads, e-consultations, connected device monitoring, and digital therapeutics. It provides an opportunity to improve quality, efficiency, effectiveness, and timeliness.
However, virtual care is still being adapted, and the healthcare industry is struggling to identify the necessary infrastructure and connected technology to meet clinician and patient demands. There is a critical need to test and learn the best way to integrate and implement consistent infrastructure across virtual visits, remote patient monitoring, and patient use of digital self-service tools alongside in-person clinical care to achieve improvements in health outcomes.
Learning Objectives
Virtual care – accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, patient demand for radical convenience, waning resources, and the rapid development of digital tools – has transitioned from being seen as a distrusted luxury to a widely adopted, critical care tool. Over the past two years, it has proved its worth. But to solidify its place as a core component of longitudinal care delivery, proponents of virtual care must further convey the value of IoT adoption in healthcare by:
o Outlining common barriers to the wide spectrum of virtual care services.
o Adapting a standardized framework to level-set virtual care delivery across areas such as infrastructure, technology, user-centered design, and analytics.
o Designing successful virtual care technology infrastructure that benefits the end user.
This is an opportunity for health systems to embrace IoT adoption and enhance virtual care by leveraging progress to create a more sustainable approach for the future.
Speaker:
Tania Elliott
Chief Medical Officer, Virtual Care at Ascension
Tania Elliott, MD, FAAAAI, FACAAI, is Chief Medical Officer, Virtual Care, Clinical & Network Services for Ascension. In this role, Dr. Elliott leads virtual care services, including advancing the adoption of virtual care across the continuum in collaboration with our Ministry Markets and Digital teams.
A nationally recognized leader in the digital health space, Dr. Elliott most recently served as Medical Director, Clinical Solutions, at Aetna, a CVS Health Company, where she specialized in the development of innovative clinical programs incorporating the use of virtual care for cardiovascular disease, women’s health, and strategies for member engagement. In addition, she is a faculty member at NYU Langone Health where she serves as the co-chair of the Virtual Care Clinical Task Force.
Dr. Elliott is also co-chair of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (ACAAI) and American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) Joint Task Force on Telemedicine and Technology. She spearheads “Tech Talks,” a series of TED-style videos and educational sessions on best practices for virtual care delivery, and has published multiple peer-reviewed papers on virtual care.
Previously, she served as the Chief Medical Officer of EHE, a national preventive health and wellness company servicing employers, where she was responsible for clinical programming, patient engagement, and digital transformation. She completed medical school at Jefferson Medical College (now the Sidney Kimmel Medical College) at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia; residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York; fellowship at NYU Winthrop Hospital, Mineola, New York, and is board certified in Allergy/Immunology and Internal Medicine.
