Newsletter Editor's Corner

Welcome to the first edition of this year’s Telehealth Section Newsletter!  My name is Dickson Cheung and I am honored to serve you all as the new editor of our section newsletter.  I jumped at the chance of filling this role when I was informed of its vacancy a couple of weeks ago.  The newsletter is a wonderful tool to highlight the good work of our section members as well as to develop a vibrant community of like-minded folks by sharing information that is of interest to us all. 

A quick introduction.  I completed my emergency medicine residency training 21 years ago at Northwestern University and have since worked at Kaiser in northern California, Johns Hopkins, Carepoint PC (private democratic group in Denver) and I am now on the faculty at the University of Colorado.  I was previously the chair of the Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (QIPS) Section and served on the Quality Performance Committee (QPC) for several years.  As patient safety and quality was the “talk of the town” the last couple of decades, I believe that telehealth will be the next “the next big thing” in healthcare for the foreseeable future.

As a section, we hope to deliver an exciting quarterly newsletter that provides updates on section activities, informs members of cutting-edge developments in the field and introduces key people in our field (some even within our own section membership).  Plans include interviews with industry experts, reviews of new telehealth devices, updates on billing and regulatory changes, how-to articles on how to lead a telehealth practice, collaboration with other related sections, and summaries of top telehealth conferences that you may not have been able to attend in person.

In this edition, we are highlighting the section taskforces by providing timely updates.  Also included is a table of relevant telehealth conferences for consideration.  For our first showcase of an industry expert, we summarized an interview with the telemedicine director at the University of Colorado, Dr Chris Davis, an emergency physician who shares his journey in telehealth.  And finally, we have a word from our fearless leader Dr Ed “Etch” Shaheen about the state of our section.

Putting together a newsletter is a team sport.  Please consider contributing an article about a cool new device you are using, a summary of a recent conference or lecture you attended, useful information about overcoming barriers in your implementation of telehealth or even a rant about your last telehealth shift.  If you don’t have time to contribute, please send suggestions about what topics you would like to read about, what personalities you would like to get to know better and what solutions you would like to learn more about. I will be your advocate and track down summaries, interviews and answers to your questions. Email me today!

Dickson Cheung, MD, MBA, MPH