The White House Office of Public Engagement Health Equity Forum held an interactive webinar on March 16, to address the intersection of telehealth and broadband access.

SCAI Government Relations staff, along with healthcare providers, administrators, and organizations, attended the event featuring experts from the White House staff and clinician researchers.

The meeting focused on the intersection of telehealth equity, broadband access, and key provisions in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that address the digital divide and expand access to telehealth.  

The panel included Dr. Megan Ranney, MD, Academic Dean for the School of Public Health at Brown, and founding Director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health, and Dr. Shuhan He, MD, Director of Growth in the MGH Center for Innovation in Digital HealthCare (CIDH), and dual faculty in the Lab of Computer Science and the Department of Emergency Medicine.

Dr. Ranney discussed the gaps in access, ability, and comfort that will need to be addressed in order to provide care at the proper place and time that work best for patients. Dr. Ranney listed the following calls to action in each category: 

Access 

• Expanding infrastructure and interoperability for both HCWs and patients 
• Insurance coverage of services 

Ability 

• Available for problems that matter 
• Digital navigators 
• Standardized data 

Comfort 

• User-centered design 
• Multilingual 
• Privacy 
• Evidence 

Dr. Ranney quoted Skye Gilbert, Deputy Director of Digital Health Solutions, “Digital is fundamentally an amplifier. It can be used to exacerbate inequities. But it can also be used to bridge and support increasing progress towards equity.” 

Dr. He discussed how certain digital health tools promote health equity, sharing examples and knowledge from the MGH CIDH. “Access is very important for digital health and health care in general,” Dr. He said. “Digital health tools can provide the ability to scale a lot of medicine, drive down costs and, frankly, improve care.” referencing several advances in telehealth and equity solutions in the digital ecosystem such as government agencies, tech/startups, institutions, clinical teams, and patients. “Research has shown over again that patients without access to critical care have profoundly worse outcomes,” explained Dr. He.

Dr. He went on to highlight projects like National Emergency Tele Critical Care Network (NETCCN), virtual neurology, and remote cardiology that try to close that gap by giving patients increased access to experts. 

The webinar concluded with the following truth: digital health has the potential to bring us closer to health equity, but it will take all of us to get there.