Telehealth: Innovations in Health Technology

Initiatives

2024 Digital Health and AI Learning Collaborative

Formerly the AAMC Telehealth Learning and Integration Collaborative. The AAMC connects participating academic hospitals and health systems who want to meaningfully advance their digital health and artificial intelligence programs. This is the third year of the collaborative, with over 25 academic health systems having participated to date. The collaborative provides a forum for these systems to share strategies and challenges and learn from each other regarding practical opportunities and methodologies used by others for integrating digital health and AI into everyday clinical care and operations. 

“The Johns Hopkins telemedicine team has found it extremely helpful to participate in the collaborative. It has been invaluable to have an environment of peers from whom we can learn best practices in areas where we are starting new initiatives and share lessons learned in areas where we are more established. The sessions are very well organized and such an efficient use of time!” — Helen Hughes, MD MPH, Medical Director, Office of Telemedicine, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Membership in the collaborative includes facilitated monthly meetings with best practice presentations from experts, in-person workshop at Medical University of South Carolina in February 2024 and networking events at conferences, Bi-annual Digital Health Benchmarking Report, from a large, national, faculty-practice based dataset, monthly policy updates, and advocacy opportunities.

Project CORE: Coordinating Optimal Referral Experiences

The AAMC has been supporting health systems in implementing eConsults (asynchronous communication between primary care providers and specialists) and improving communication and coordination at the point of referral since 2014. Initially launched at five academic health systems through a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) Health Care Innovation Award, Project CORE has now expanded to over 50 academic health systems and children’s hospitals, better serving the needs of collective primary care populations totaling over 4 million patients. The model has been shown to improve timely access to specialty input, yield positive patient and provider experience, reduce no-show rates and leakage rates, improve comprehensiveness in primary care, and improve coordination of care between PCPs and specialists.

Publications

Digital Health Equity Current Practices and Approaches of Academic Medical Centers

Digital tools such as patient portals, telehealth, and mobile apps have become an integral aspect of the delivery of health care. Digital health equity has become central to the future of digitally powered health care delivery. This report is intended to help shape health system strategies to embrace and leverage digital tools in a manner that respects those systems’ fundamental commitment to health and health care equity.

While AMCs will not, by themselves, solve all barriers to digital equity, they have a responsibility to understand these barriers and then to study and design innovative and culturally appropriate solutions to overcome them. This report highlights the roles AMCs are playing to improve digital health equity and identifies opportunities and evolving approaches that AMCs can adapt, implement, and scale. Download the Digital Health Equity Current Practices and Approaches of Academic Medical Centers.

Effective Strategies for Sustaining and Optimizing Telehealth in Primary Care

Vizient and the AAMC partnered to study telehealth sustainability in primary care, including general internal medicine, family medicine, and geriatrics. The goal of this project was to understand variations across AMCs in use of telehealth to deliver adult primary care beyond the pandemic, explore AMCs’ motivations for sustained telehealth use, understand how sustained use was achieved, and study associated implications on clinical performance. Effective strategies outlined in this report can be utilized by health systems and primary care leaders working to expand and further leverage telehealth within their primary care services. Download the Effective Strategies for Sustaining and Optimizing Telehealth in Primary Care.

Telehealth in Academic Medicine: Roles, Opportunities, and Risks

If academic health systems are to be leaders in the rapidly advancing field of telehealth, they must consider opportunities and risks in developing workforce capacity, telehealth training, and collecting high-quality data and conducting telehealth research. Access the Academic Medicine article.

Success: Integration Imperatives and Best Practices for Advancing Telehealth in Academic Health Systems

As telehealth has become an even more widely accepted mode of delivering care, AMCs are examining how telehealth can advance their strategic goals. AMCs must learn how to integrate telehealth capabilities into their everyday clinical care and operations.

This report from the AAMC Future of Academic Medicine Series will help health system leaders and telehealth managers to critically assess, design, implement, and integrate telehealth programs across mission areas. It presents effective strategies and successful practices from leaders at 15 AMCs with leading telehealth programs. Download the Sustaining Telehealth Success: Integration Imperatives and Best Practices for Advancing Telehealth in Academic Health Systems.