T-Health

Institute for Advanced Telemedicine and Telehealth

To address the shortages in the availability of health care professionals in Arizona, in the US Military Healthcare System, and throughout the United States, and to develop facilities to house next generation health care education programs as recently recommended by the National Institute of Medicine, the Arizona Telemedicine Program has received funding from the Department of Defense budget to equip and staff the headquarters of its Institute for Advanced Telemedicine and Telehealth (T-Health) to be located in downtown Phoenix. 

 The national shortage of health care professionals is most acute in Arizona and other western states.  Arizona ranks 43^rd, 49^th and 50^th in the numbers of physicians, pharmacists and nurses per capita, respectively.  Availability of healthcare workers in the US Military is also an issue.  The recently signed National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2005 improves significantly the overall health benefits available to guardsmen, reservists and their families and makes permanent several of the TRICARE benefits authorized “temporarily” under defense legislation last year while extending secretarial authorization for others.  However, success of these programs depends, in part, on the availability of healthcare workers who are, unfortunately, often in short supply.  Implementation is especially challenging in many geographic locations with significant shortages in healthcare manpower. 

 The current institutional infrastructure for producing health care workers, and support their post-degree training is clearly insufficient to meet demands.  Alternative approaches, such as the networking of professional educators, the redesign of curriculum, and increasing mass customization of educational materials, can address these problems.  Distance learning and telemedicine/telehealth provide additional approaches for learning.  These mechanisms increase access to teaching and training for geographically underserved populations and have been proven to improve the efficiency of these educational activities.

 Another problem relates to the restricted availability of training opportunities in certain specific shortage areas, such as medical technology and biomedical engineering. Many universities have curtailed training programs in these areas.  “eHealthU”, a recently created distance learning component of T-Health and the Arizona Telemedicine Program,  is specifically addressing these needs by creating distance learning curriculum in healthcare areas in short supply for delivery over telemedicine networks.  The Four Corners Telehealth Consortium, to be headquartered at T-Health in Phoenix, has been organized with support from DoD.  Members include the state-based telemedicine/telehealth programs housed at the Universities in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.  The Four Corners Telehealth Consortium co-sponsors eHealthU.  Initially, eHealthU will aim at increasing the candidate pool for healthcare careers by offering military personnel entry level courses and individualized mentoring by distance learning. Advanced placement credits will be made available to personnel who complete course requirements by distance learning.  Course design will be tailored to the schedules of active duty military personnel and support personnel.

Because of the urgent need to improve medical and nursing education programs, and program in the allied health fields, to meet the growing demand for trained health care professionals, the University of Arizona received federal funds to equip and staff the Institute for Advanced Telemedicine and Telehealth, (T-Health) a state-of-the-art telehealth education center to be headquartered in Phoenix.  T-Health’s mission is to create next-generation innovations in health care delivery and education, especially those that leverage advances in medical informatics, wireless telecommunications, telemedicine/ telehealth, simulation, and robotics.  Its work in these areas will subsequently address shortages in health care workers; serve the health care needs of underserved populations; and advance the state-of-the-art in health care.  T-Health will be a driver for the creation of new companies in Arizona that produce:  education and training products, including hardware, software; medical devices, in the areas of robotic surgery, virtual reality, medical imaging, haptic system simulation, decision support systems, and database mining; mass customization of curricula; and next generation health care monitoring and productivity tools.

Updated:  March 2, 2007