By Jon Stemmle
It’s been a few weeks since the American Telemedicine Association national conference ended, and I’m still sorting out all that I learned. Although we’ve been involved with telehealth through the Heartland Telehealth Resource Center since late 2010, attending the national conference was like a master class in telemedicine practice.
The one thing I was most unsure of when I arrived in San Jose, Calif., was whether the idea of health communication was valued by those doing telemedicine. That was answered with a quite emphatic “YES!” by incoming ATA President Dr. Stuart Ferguson. Ferguson, who runs the Northwest Regional Telehealth Resource Center (NRTRC), said in his ending address that telehealth works, but not enough people know about it. He put the question to the audience “How do we get the message out?”
Ferguson then went on to extol the importance of targeted awareness about telehealth, empowering our leaders with information and sharing best practices.
Based on some of the conference panels and posters presented, members of the ATA were already starting to put these ideas into practice. There was a presentation about using tailored text messages to reach veterans and one about how one of the key ways to build a rural telehealth network included marketing and public relations.
There were also several posters that used health communication techniques to get information to the public, including presented by a group from the University of Kansas Center for Telemedicine and Telehealth about a new website that would help inform both parents of children with epilepsy and their doctors about telemedicine.
During this next year it will be interesting to see if Ferguson’s mission to get the message out about telemedicine is met and if this is the year that the concept breaks into the mainstream. From what we learned at ATA, we’re currently revamping the HTRC website to better communicate that message to health professionals. Check it out in the next few weeks. It will be a work in progress, but in a direction we believe will help to push things in the right direction.