by Robbie Schneider
February 08, 2023 - The New England Journal of Medicine has featured Health Tech Without Borders, an independent, global non-profit movement providing digital health and telehealth aid where it's needed most, in its February 08 edition, “NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery, Volume 4, Issue 3”.
“Rapid Deployment of Telehealth in a Conflict Zone: Supporting the Humanitarian Needs in Ukraine” provides a case study outlining considerations for rapidly establishing telehealth support within a war zone.
Just days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Health Tech Without Borders was formed to develop and coordinate a worldwide network of clinicians and psychologists that could provide health care services through customized telehealth platforms operating in the war-torn area.
“Our priorities were to help the Ukrainian health care system cope with the difficulty in accessing medical care by providing free access to urgent primary care and high-quality psychologic support directly to patients and clinical colleagues via telehealth platforms,” said Health Tech Without Borders founder Jarone Lee, MD, MPH.
Telehealth solutions offer many advantages over traditional medical care in global health in terms of accessibility, health equity, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, safety and scalability. The Health Tech Without Borders initiative demonstrates how telehealth can be rapidly deployed in an international disaster response situation and offers a model that could be adapted in support of other crises and humanitarian response efforts.
In the case study, the authors outlined key learnings from their launch of needed telehealth services in a disaster zone, including collaboration with local governmental and nongovernmental partners, identification of technical requirements for telehealth services in a disaster implementation, deployment and onboarding processes, and culturally appropriate care.
Study authors were Jarone Lee, MD, MPH; Marianna Petrea-Imenokhoeva, MS; Hicham Naim, PharmD; Adi Balk; and Shuhan He, MD.
You can read the full article here: https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.22.0413
About Health Tech Without Borders
Health Tech Without Borders is a global non-profit organization that supports local communities affected by sudden humanitarian emergencies. As an innovation hub, Health Tech Without Borders connects those in need of medical attention with vetted volunteer clinicians via online health intervention tools and offers targeted digital trainings to equip medical personnel with any additional education they might need.
Since its inception, Health Tech Without Borders has helped more than 100,000 patients in regions of crisis to seek medical and psychological support and facilitated targeted training for more than 2,000 clinicians.
Learn more at www.HTWB.org or at www.linkedIn.com/company/healthtechwb.