Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Adapting during a pandemic at MIT Medical”.
[, MUSIC PLAYING ] BRIAN SCHUETZ. This has been an incredible time for MIT Medical.. It’S been challenging., It’s been rewarding., It’s been emotional., It’s been draining., It’s been enlightening.. We really started our COVID response planning in earnest, probably about a week week and a half before the campus emptied out dedensified., And that was because we just needed to get ahead of it.. At that point it was very clear to us that we were not going to be able to operate in any way, shape or form like we used to in person and that the only path for us was telemedicine..
Beth DOWNING Make two appointments. I can join the session here if I want to. SHERI GIANGREGORIO Now telehealth had been something that we had been thinking. About.
And like everyone was pushed home. We really needed to be able to have a solution where we could still care for our patients.. If we had done this following normal project management principles, this project probably would have taken us six months to roll out.. There are so many different pieces and we didn’t have six months., So we were able to get it up and running really in a matter of weeks.
It’ll update, patient tracking, which is updating the area where all the — BETH DOWNING The first task we had to Do was identify the providers that were going to participate., Then we were challenged with scheduling individual training sessions for each provider and Tom Sheri, and I did that. Currently the primary care service, urgent care, dermatology service, –, they’re, all conducting telehealth visits.. Additionally, student mental health and counseling is using telehealth to connect to their patients.
TOM GOODWIN. Most interesting or fascinating things for me was how quickly the clinicians gathered up and they discussed how you behave. What happens during these visits..
They really talked about how you connect with the patient and they really had some fascinating concepts that they shared amongst themselves., And I just found it was so interesting because we’re on the technology side, where we push the devices and the means and the mechanisms. And they’re Actually, using it and they’re using it in a really cool way., BRIAN SCHUETZ, MIT Medical dates back nearly a century, and so we’ve worked through some of the most dangerous and deadly diseases over that time and keeping the campus safe. And with COVID we’ve really redoubled. Our efforts around community health and public health., We are very, very lucky that early on in this process, working with an MIT partner at the Broad Institute, we were able to stand up a pretty significant testing capacity, much much larger than any other university or college. In the Boston, area. And that’s a big part of what’s keeping the community safe right, now.
One of the things we’re looking at as we go forward, it’s not just replacing with telemedicine. It’s also supplementing with telemedicine. BETH DOWNING. Our particular scenario is a student that is coming in to be seen and then goes back home.. The provider can check in with the students wherever they are. TOM GOODWIN.
You don’t have to get in the car anymore, to drive to park.. You can come as you are.. There are so many benefits to being able to do this sort of thing, virtually., SHERI GIANGREGORIO. I do think overall people like it.
And I think that it will continue to be a big part of MIT Medical., [ MUSIC PLAYING ] .