I had an opportunity to attend the American Telemedicine Association 2018 Conference (ATA18), in Chicago, Illinois, at McCormick Place. The annual gathering brings together healthcare professionals, business professionals, and leaders in different areas of healthcare and technology and occurred from Sunday April 29 to Tuesday May 1, 2018. ATA18 was billed as the world’s largest telehealth networking event with a focus on the latest innovations. The term telehealth includes many technologies and ways to deliver virtual medical, health, and education services. More than 150 different exhibitors were in attendance. Attendees also had the opportunity to attend over 100 sessions.
I attended sessions including “Technology in Service to Patients and Consumers: Emerging Trends in Virtual Care,” “What Does Artificial Intelligence Have to Do with Population Health?,” and “New Models for Telehealth at Scale: Strategic Telehealth Expansion Initiatives at DoD and VA.” A doctor from Partners Healthcare in Boston discussed four different ways that they are using artificial intelligence to help in the hospital setting. For example, there was some discussion of how a good predictor for when a patient may be re-admitted is if they live alone and have no support systems. It was also interesting to see all the ways the army, navy, airforce, and department of veterans affairs of the U.S. has expanded ways to treat patients without the physician actually seeing them in an office. In particular, the navy discussed how with radiology most of their radiologists are now located in several larger cities in the U.S. and that at some of their sites there is no radiologist. Instead, around 25% to 30% of all the work the radiologists do is for other sites outside of their location. It also seemed that the largest current component for physician patient interactions is using telehealth to deliver behavioral medicine like cognitive behavioral therapy.
Below are some of the pictures I took while at the ATA annual conference in 2018, in Chicago, IL.
