Telementoring at UPMC: the Newest Frontier in Surgical Training

Yes, we have relationships with universities all over the world. And first, we need a good surgical team with some surgical experience already. And it has to be in a geographic location with a clinical need, in an area in which there’s a concentration of patients. So we’re trying to create centers of excellence around the world, so that we can train whole regions. And obviously, there can’t be significant language barriers.

So we’re looking at places in China and other sites in East Asia and India; and there may be sites in Latin America and Europe, in Canada. In Asia, we have contacts in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, and Australia. We’re still in an exploratory phase, in that regard.

What should CIOs, CMIOs, and other healthcare IT leaders know about this?

It involves a basic IT infrastructure that most hospitals are capable of handling; and also, it involves a common surgery. So you can really have a broad array of surgical services in which you have multiple services involved. And using existing Internet connections. We were in Brighton, England, and were able to watch a surgery here. And we also did that from Belgium, as in both cases we wanted to participate in surgeries back home. So there are applications other than just telementoring. You can monitor junior surgeons, you can provide emergency interoperative consultations if someone’s have trouble. And it’s a way to demonstrate new technologies; and also provide ongoing credentialing of surgeons.

Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

One thing that might be worth emphasizing is that the standard model of surgeons traveling places and trying to do a bunch of surgeries, really has a limited impact, because a surgeon can only treat one person at a time, so it’s not a cost-effective model. And by telementoring a surgeon or team of surgeons, we’re really expanding the model. And it’s probably the most cost-effective model or this type of work. Certainly, there are some legal, privacy, and liability issues that need to be worked out; we’re trying not to let those be an impediment. And also, there’s no financial model for this yet; right now, we’re doing this on a charity basis. And obviously, you need a strong basic technology foundation, you can’t have the Internet connection be broken. Also, these are experienced surgeons, they’re not beginners. They just struggle to get to the next level. And so they come to Pittsburgh and take our course, and do cadaveric dissection and watch our surgeries, and then they go back to their home countries, and we continue through telementoring. And at some point, there might be a need for us to go back, but this is a way for sort of weaning them off that onsite relationship.