Strategic Objective 3: Standard Setting & Quality Assurance

Session Description:

Interest and use of telemedicine (also referred to as virtual or remote health care) has accelerated in recent years, catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, both in day-to-day healthcare delivery as well as in health emergency response. Telemedicine, which is defined by WHO as the provision of health-care services at a distance, encompasses remote direct-to-patient encounters, provider-to-provider consultations, telemonitoring, and asynchronous store and forward services. The potential benefits of telemedicine in disaster and health emergency response are numerous: more timely delivery of certain services; virtual expansion of available providers, both in quantity and in expertise; and overcoming of access barriers such as geography, damaged infrastructure, insecurity, operational impermissibility or chemical, biological, radiological/nuclear hazards. However, telemedicine also introduces additional considerations to ensure safe, appropriate, and effective care. This includes issues such as patient privacy, data security, reliable technological infrastructure, competencies in telemedicine practice, cross-jurisdictional requirements, interoperable systems, including for continuity of care, and integration with national strategies for digital health transformation.

In this session, participants will learn about the experiences of different organizations in their implementation and use of telehealth/medicine in different contexts, including conflict-affected, remote or difficult to access settings. Lessons on operational requirements, challenges and limitations will be highlighted. Following this, all participants will be engaged in a structured discussion/scoping exercise with opportunity to contribute their inputs on the considerations and requirements for a future technical guidance on the implementation and use of telehealth/medicine for EMTs and other surge response capacities.