The 4th Annual Pediatric Telehealth Colloquium is a two day conference proposed to be held in between September 24-25 in Palm Springs, California.
We aim to create a forum, which brings together medical providers, hospital administrators and information technology specialists to share, disseminate, and train others to develop and improve clinical telemedicine programs. The purpose of these pediatric clinical telemedicine programs is to increase access to care, reduce disparities in care, and increase the overall quality of care delivered to children in rural and underserved medical communities in a financially sustainable framework. Conference Objective: The conference will provide information to both the providers of telemedicine (hub sites) and users of telemedicine (remote sites), typically located in rural and underserved communities. The objectives of the two day conference are to: 1) provide an overview of the technical, administrative and clinical operations of a telemedicine program;2) demonstrate how telemedicine can be used to assist in the care of pediatric patients in a variety of clinical settings;3) disseminate information on the successful use of this technology to improve the access, quality and efficiency of care delivered to children;4) provide the information required to ensure a self-sustaining, financially viable, successful telemedicine program;and 5) share current efforts on how to evaluate and research the impact of telemedicine on processes and outcomes of care;6) demonstrate the use of telemedicine in continuing medical education across multiple institutions. Methods: We plan to achieve our objectives through interactive lectures, scientific sessions, as well as workshops on the five objectives. We will provide lectures;scientific sessions and workshops to help attendees better understand the technology of telemedicine and provide examples pediatric telemedicine care models in the outpatient and inpatient settings. Speakers will be selected from a range of experience and backgrounds, and will include clinicians, administrator and technicians from new and established programs, from hub and remote sites, and from academic and rural/underserved sites. We will also include scientific sessions that include platform presentations, targeted at novel and innovative uses of telemedicine, as well as poster presentations, targeted at clinical and programmatic issues in telemedicine. We will also create and provide the presentations and slides on DVDs and through websites at no additional cost for all interested providers across the United States. In this proposal for small conference grant we requests partial funding for the conference to subsidize registration for rural practitioners and practitioners working in medically underserved communities by offsetting our other conference costs, speaker fees for guest faculty to offset their out of pocket conference cost, and salary support and travel for the conference organizing committee. Key Words: 1) Pediatrics;2) Telehealth and Telemedicine;3) Rural Health;4) Research;5) Access to Health Care;5) Primary Care Provider Education;6) Healthcare Disparities;7) Quality of Care and Improvement.
Relevance: The 4th Annual Pediatric Telehealth Colloquium will provide an interactive environment for sharing examples of successful telemedicine models, including technical, programmatic, administrative, and financial considerations. The colloquium will also share how successful telemedicine programs have used this technology to provided health care services to underserved areas and accomplish this in a financially sustainable framework. The colloquium will also demonstrate and share how the use of telemedicine in continuing medical education across multiple institutions has helped the medical community. Incorporating telemedicine into pediatric care can help increase access, decrease disparities and increase quality of care provided to children living in rural and underserved communities.
