At an event held by the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., this week, disaster relief and emergency management experts discussed how telehealth, mobile communications and social media are changing the way the U.S. responds to disasters.
Social Media, Mobile Technologies
Joe Becker -- senior vice president of disaster services at the American Red Cross -- said that he has seen a shift in recent years from a "closed system," based around proprietary technologies used by police, fire and medical responders, to an "open system," in which families, neighbors and volunteers use tools like Facebook and Twitter to improve communication and offer help.
He said, “It's not about the proprietary systems. ... It's how we leverage the technology that people use in their daily lives to become part of the response." Becker noted that he is "not saying 'get rid of the big, proprietary systems,'" but rather that those systems should feed into and complement social medial tools.
According to Becker, the Red Cross first began using social media about four to five years ago, initially to participate in the online conversation. The Red Cross then began leveraging social media and mobile technologies for fundraising efforts, such as its Text2Help project, Becker said.
Most recently, the organization has begun to use text messaging and social networking tools to deliver disaster relief services. For example, Becker said the American Red Cross sends text messages to tell affected individuals where they can find emergency services and also lets individuals send text messages to the American Red Cross if they need help.
Becker said social media is "dramatically changing how we do business."
While Becker said he sees significant opportunity in the use of social media in disaster response, he warns that it "creates incredible expectations" of finite first response resources. He noted that once you establish a social media presence, residents will expect you to monitor those forums and respond during disasters.
Telehealth
Alexander Vo -- an associate professor in preventive medicine and community health and the executive director of the Center for Telehealth Research and Policy at the University of Texas Medical Branch -- discussed how telemedicine can help connect health care providers and patients during an emergency.
He noted that like patients, health care providers also are affected by disasters. Telehealth technology can allow physicians to provide important health care services remotely, Vo said.
While telehealth is "not the solution for everything," it is a tool to help deliver health care, Vo said.
Vo said that during the recovery efforts after the recent earthquake in Haiti, some firms donated expensive telehealth technology, but it went unused because doctors were not trained to use it. He explained that there was not a significant need for telemedicine in the first three weeks after the disaster because there were plenty of doctors on the ground. He said such technology becomes useful once those foreign doctors return to their countries and Haitian patients need to remotely connect with specialists.
In contrast, UTMB health care providers were able to use UTMB's telemedicine services to treat patients within 48 hours after Hurricane Ike struck Texas and that UTMB's telemedicine services were back to near normal activity within two weeks.
In a report titled "UTMB Telemedicine Disaster Response and Recovery: Lessons Learned From Hurricane Ike," Vo details eight lessons learned during UTMB's response to Hurricane Ike:
- The medical community is part of the local community and, therefore, is affected by the same events affecting the community at large;
- Geographic dispersion of caregivers in a telemedicine environment can help mitigate the impact of natural disasters or other disruptive events;
- Cell phones can facilitate medical care by reconfiguring the system to enable remote consultations and reduce patient load on local and/or temporary facilities;
- Developing protocols for using mobile communication devices in advance of disasters or other service disruptions can help to ensure rapid deployment of telemedicine;
- It is essential to engage in advance planning that builds disaster operational and recovery capabilities into the health care system data and telecommunications network well ahead of the event;
- Redundancy, including geographically diverse data centers, can sustain operations;
- Network design that reduces reliance on individual failure points such as network hubs can limit service disruptions; and
- Advance planning should identify critical systems, detail how to protect them and establish a prioritization plan for all assets.
According to Vo, an increase in efficiency is one of the main drivers and facilitators of telemedicine adoption, while reimbursement and state licensure issues are barriers to widespread use of the technology.
In an interview with iHealthBeat, Vo said, "It would be nice if in the near future there [was a] provision allowing telehealth cross state consult in the cases of disaster and emergencies."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Kate Ackerman
Quelle/Source: iHealthBeat, 22.04.2010
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