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Digital Health CRC launches telehealth training website

   

Hub will provide advice and information to help practitioners adapt to social distancing regulations

A website to help Australia’s health professionals gain access to a wide range of telehealth services and training advice to deal with Covid-19 social distancing regulations has been launched by the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre.

The Telehealth Hub will help doctors, health workers and agencies decide what kind of online services are most appropriate for their practices and clients.

The website collates and indexes a wide range of telehealth resources that have been suggested and recommended by health workers. It follows a series of Covid-19 telehealth webinars conducted in March and April by the CRC, which were attended by around 5,000 online participants from health services.

“In the webinars, large audiences learned from expert practitioners and clinicians who generously shared their own experience and tips on getting up to speed effectively and rapidly,” a CRC statement says.

“Q&A sessions in the webinars generated a huge amount of valuable information from both our presenters and the audience who have submitted links, resources and recommendations. We’ve collated this crowdsourced information and presented it on this website.”

The website was developed in collaboration with Curtin University in Western Australia and La Trobe University in Melbourne and regional Victoria. It offers links to guides, videos and references that were discussed during the webinars.

“The team quickly mobilised highly skilled people to check, collate and index the crowdsourced information,” the CRC says.

“In the face of Covid-19, rapid adoption of telehealth has been an essential tool in the delivery of healthcare services…the idea for the website emerged from the Q&A sessions and chat forum within the webinars.”

The CRC is inviting health professionals to contribute to the website by adding, updating and correcting information online.

La Trobe University announced on 1 May that it had joined the CRC as a research partner. Victor Pantano, the CRC’s chief executive, said the university would be involved in research projects to help government agencies manage health systems data.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore the importance of digital health in meeting one of the biggest health challenges of our time. But there are many other areas of healthcare in which digital health will make a big impact—including preventive health,” he said.