How Harvard’s telehealth program can be a guide toward success

Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center quickly developed a telehealth system at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The system employs robots, remote devices, tele-rounding, and hackathons for virtual patient care. They have overcome challenges such as privacy, language support, physician burnout, and training. The health system built its own telehealth platform and hopes to sustain virtual care in the future. The system conducts about 4,200 patient visits per week and has been successful in integrating with existing workflows. They will present their model at HIMSS22.