The Ida Institute is excited to be progressing with our Vision 2020 projects. We’ve now held the initial virtual meetings about the Tele-health portion of our process. The first stage of this process looked at developing a small, flexible model of potential best practices for tele-health in audiology.
Prior to the meetings, three guest speakers uploaded brief video selfies discussing different aspects of tele-health to the Ida Forum. These selfies provided fodder for the initial discussions. Two discussions touched upon in the meetings were how to define tele-health and good tele-health communication.
The primary goal of tele-health is to offer better access to patients with either limited mobility, or who live in places where there isn’t easy access to an audiologist. There are, of course, some potential challenges associated with this. Many revolve around the technological aspects such as technical connectivity and both the clinician and patient keeping up with the latest technology. There are also professional aspects to consider, such as what standards need to be established, what training and licensing would be needed, and what sort of business model would tele-health follow.
While the hours an audiologist might have to keep were of some concern, at the same time, tele-health could offer a more flexible schedule to the audiologist as well as the patients and their families. There are also more opportunities for sharing resources and teachable moments between clinicians, lecturers, researchers, and students.
At Ida, a big concern of ours is how to keep the principles of patient centered care at the forefront of tele-health, in particular how the clinician and patient can build a strong relationship, even though they wouldn’t physically be in the same room.
Vision 2020 aims to collaboratively create a global vision of hearing healthcare in the year 2020. Check back soon for the latest developments in Tele-health and the Hearing Care Manager of the Future work streams.