Making Virtual Care a Reality

The big news this week for us was the workshop we hosted on Making Virtual Care a Reality. Tuesday included talks on the state of the art and descriptions of real systems that have been implemented. 96 people attend the Tuesday morning session and 57 attended the afternoon session. Friday was an interactive workshop for participants to think through their virtual care idea with a team--they really valued the questions we encouraged them to ask, the instruments and templates we provided, and the opportunity to get feedback from subject matter experts and peers. Thanks to Kara for her vision and execution, for Alison's support, and for many of for helping lead a discussion group on the future vision of virtual care. Here are some highlights from the excellent talks:

	Feby Savira summarized a literature review that her team (including Cecily) have done on virtual care for older adults in Australia. I was surprised at how few virtual care studies have taken place in aged care facilities.
	Feby was convinced that older adults are ready for virtual care. They are enthusiastic adopters, given the right inputs and enablers. One of the barriers was that some of them over use the system and become anxious.
	​Why have I not met Len Gray yet? His talk was like a walk through Australian digital health history, with a focus on telehealth and virtual care. I thought the challenges he listed were spot on.
	​His thoughts on evaluation were really insightful. We always aim to be in the green box, but a project in the red box can be a success too, if we are offering something not as good and more expensive but better than nothing, which is what they would have gotten.
	Kylie Woolcock from AHHA provided a slide that can guide us in our goal of transformation. We can't spend all of our time on augmenting/modifying the status quo--we need to be redefining how we deliver care and empower patients.
	​And even though we are only a small part of a bigger movement, it will take thousands of decentralized steps to get us where we need to be. We are part of something bigger.

Brian has been in Utah visiting our kids and friends and skiing. Remember Mt Superior Health in the LHS course? Here is a picture he took of Mt Superior from the Alta Ski Resort parking lot. I won't get to ski when I visit in May, but maybe I'll hike Mt Superior.

RLQ: ”Stuffed” is distinctly Australian and means “ruined, or a mess”. Jonathon Green, in his great dictionary of slang, records the verb “to stuff” from the late 1800s as meaning “to hoax someone, to defeat or outwit them.” Behind this lies the old Middle English word “stuff” meaning “to fill up”—so if you fill someone up with lies and deceptions you “stuff” them. Hence the Australian word “stuffed” seems to follow on from this to give us the idea that someone can be ruined by anything as well as by lies and deception. And that wider meaning seems to be where the Australian word came from. (see https://ozwords.com.au/history)