Tyto Care partners with Avera eCARE for telehealth delivered to medically underserved populations

October 23, 2019 | by

Following on last week’s announcement of Tyto Care‘s partnership with Novant Health, Sioux Falls SD-based telemedicine provider Avera eCARE will be introducing Tyto Care’s professional version, TytoPro, into its telemedicine service using high-definition video for virtual consults. What TytoPro will add is remote diagnostic capability and collection via the TytoVisit platform, using the TytoApp and Clinician dashboard. Avera will use TytoPro’s hand-held device with exam camera, thermometer, otoscope, stethoscope (with volume, bell, and diaphragm filters), and tongue depressor adaptors.

In a test of Avera eCARE plus Tyto Care in an assisted living community, the pairing of the two systems reduced emergency department transfers by 20 percent, with 93% of residents treated in place.

Avera eCARE, a part of Avera Health, provides telemedicine services to medically underserved populations via local healthcare systems, rural hospitals, outpatient clinics, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living communities, schools, and correctional facilities. It has over 400 providers in its comprehensive virtual health network across the US. A ‘white paper’ on the Avera/Tyto Care partnership is here. Release 

Telemedicine changing Texas rural health and emergency medicine

August 2, 2018 | by

The expanded use of telemedicine in Texas–controversial and delayed by the state medical society, despite its use in distance medicine and prisons–is slowly starting to change rural health in the state. SB1107 passed the Texas legislature in 2017, removing the previous requirement for an in-person medical consultation. Texas, like many Western states, has an acute shortage of primary care doctors in 184 of 254 counties, according to the state health service.

Where telemedicine fills that gap is in areas such as emergency rooms in rural hospitals. In Van Horn, population 2,000, with the next hospital 90 miles away, telemedicine enables the ER  to operate two trauma rooms and for the state, have a doctor there well within 30 minutes away which is the state requirement for a basic-level trauma facility. The ER connects with an office building in Sioux Falls, SD to a nurse and doctor on immediate call to help oversee care via the Avera eCare telemedicine system.

Universities have also worked to diversify telemedicine use in other settings. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center has pioneered its use in ambulances and schools. The regional TexLa Telehealth Resource Center helps anyone looking to start a telemedicine project. By 2020, the University of Texas will have telemedicine fully implemented on campus. Houston Chronicle

HIMSS17 dispatch: developing a telehealth IT team in health system and multi-site networks

February 22, 2017 | by

Reader Bill Oravecz of Stone Health Innovations is attending HIMSS17 in Orlando, and was kind enough to forward a ‘hot off the presses’ link to this presentation deck given by Jay Weems of Avera eCARE (downloadable as PDF). The subject is ‘Telehealth Workforce Offers Unique Competencies & Opportunities’ and covers how telehealth/telemedicine IT is developed in a health system, mentoring rural originating sites in building proficiencies, and Avera’s experience in supporting a 13-state, multi-system, multi-specialty network. This is more about telemedicine (virtual consults) but offers lessons in developing both in a B2B model.

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