29 June 2020
Geneva Telemedicine Team Selected to Rapidly Develop and Deploy National Telecritical Care Network for COVID-19
A team of clinical and technical experts will provide urgently needed comprehensive solutions for clinical, informational, technical, training, and deployment aspects in order to bring critical care resources to every bedside.
The Geneva Foundation (Geneva) and the Telemedical Research for Operational Support (TR4OS) program of Madigan Army Medical Center has been selected to create the Disaster Telemedicine Response System (DISTRESS), a distributed, comprehensive telecritical care system to make critical care resources more widely available. The U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command’s (USAMRDC) Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) through the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC) Other Transaction Authority (OTA) awarded nine cohorts to support the rapid development, deployment and testing of the National Emergency Telecritical Care Network (NETCCN).
DISTRESS represents a solution for developing a comprehensive, modular, and flexible NETCCN framework with a near-patient, local, regional and national telecritical care infrastructure to provide urgently needed assistance during natural disasters, mass casualty events, or other medical emergencies such as COVID-19.
“COVID-19 has provided a real-world demonstration of what the virtual health community had identified as a capability gap of our healthcare system. There is a need to provide ‘care anywhere’ to resource-limited settings,” said Principal Investigator LTC Christopher J. Colombo, MD, FACP, FCCM Chief, Department of Virtual Health and Telecritical Care at Madigan Army Medical Center. “We can mitigate this gap with a flexible, scalable, and rapidly deployable platform to connect critical care providers from anywhere to any point of need by being online within minutes. I am so humbled to be part of the incredible team brought together by Geneva to go after this opportunity.”
NETCCN is a health information management system using cellular communication networks, mobile, and cloud technologies, to extend virtual critical care wards at nearly every bedside lacking adequate critical care expertise and resources necessary for care of COVID-19-related illnesses. This is achieved by a distributed care provider network supported by a vendor-agnostic critical care technology system of systems.
Under the direction of LTC Colombo, Geneva’s diverse team assembled for the project consists of multi-disciplinary clinical and technical experts with collaborators at DocBox Inc., Omnicure Inc., Massachusetts General Hospital’s Medical Device Interoperability and Cybersecurity Program (MDPnP), the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), and Google.
“Geneva is well-positioned to deliver a high-quality telemedicine response to this critical care need. This initiative has the unique advantage of bringing active-duty military medical expertise to lead this effort with a team in place who has already been working collaboratively on multiple telemedicine projects to advance military medicine,” said Elise W. Huszar, President and CEO of The Geneva Foundation.
The team will implement a standards-based Internet of Things (IoT) architecture such as integrated clinical environment and a cloud-based framework to make the system scalable and flexible, allowing clinical guidelines and instructions available at the clinical team’s fingertips ensuring real-time validated dissemination of information.
The collected and aggregated standardized data is readily available for real-time analysis and dashboards aiding in emergency management during the crisis and provides information for retrospective analysis, quality assurance, and training to improve care during future events.
The Geneva team will initially configure, test, and demonstrate a proof of concept of integration from the bedside to the cloud. The government will then select a subset of teams to rapidly deploy, enhance, and improve their solutions, aiming to have full development and integration within 6-18 months.
About The Geneva Foundation
The Geneva Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that advances military medicine through innovative scientific research, exceptional program management, and a dedication to U.S. service members and veterans, their families, and the global community. Geneva is proud to have over 25 years of experience in delivering full-spectrum scientific, technical, and program management expertise in the areas of federal grants, federal contracts, industry-sponsored clinical trials, and educational services. http://www.genevaUSA.org
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