Future Health 12/12/17
Delivering care in the new virtual world...
"Virtualist" Health Care - For the last several years, I've been giving talks about the use of technology in health care and promoting the notion that we need to develop, support and train "Healthcare Virtualists". So, at the urging of a number of colleagues, I worked with a couple of like-minded individuals to develop an article on the subject which we dutifully submitted to the various journals. Unfortunately, we were pre-empted by an article in the JAMA Network on the promoting the idea of creating a new specialty, the "Medical Virtualist". I agree and disagree. On the notion of "virtualist", I absolutely agree. We need to develop criteria, training, educational requirements and the like to support this very important addition to medical and health care practice. On the notion of "medical", I absolutely disagree. Some element of virtualist training should be a requirement for all clinical specialties (i.e. physicians, nurses, pharmacists, medical social workers, psychologists, etc.) and all clinicians should have the opportunity to become specialists in the use of virtual care delivery. It is not a physician only specialty. On the whole, a very important topic. Read the JAMA article. I've obviously got more to say on the topic but, I'm submitting yet another article J. More later...
