Readers Write: ATA 2024 Spotlights How Collaboration, AI, and Patient-Centricity Will Define Telehealth’s Future

ATA 2024 Spotlights How Collaboration, AI, and Patient-Centricity Will Define Telehealth’s Future
By Amy Window

Amy Window is vice president of strategic alliances at Infermedica.

The American Telemedicine Association’s (ATA) annual conference united experts to discuss how technology is transforming telehealth. While recognizing that technology is just one facet of the solution, attendees emphasized its vital role in improving care quality and access, with collaboration and AI adoption surfacing as central topics.

Among the themes emerging from ATA Nexus 2024:

• Technology-driven healthcare. While technology is pivotal to medicine’s future, it’s not a standalone solution but rather part of a comprehensive approach. To truly impact healthcare, we must look beyond the tech itself and consider how it interacts with evolving human behavior.
• Radical collaboration. Transforming healthcare demands collaboration rather than circumventing existing systems. Partnerships can align goals and uncover innovative solutions that enhance care quality and accessibility. Companies are increasingly joining forces to offer end-to-end telemedicine platforms spanning the patient journey, with health systems favoring unified solutions over piecemeal offerings.
• AI adoption. Integrating AI should be a top priority, given its potential to boost efficiency and predictive power in healthcare. However, maximizing its impact and ensuring adoption by professionals and consumers alike will require refined implementation strategies. Building trust and developing responsible AI practices were key topics at the conference.
• From patients to consumers. As telemedicine shifts to a consumer-centric model, understanding and catering to the choices and expectations of healthcare consumers is paramount. Empowered consumers demand personalized, convenient care options, and providers must rise to meet their evolving needs. This means treating virtual encounters with the same care and attention as in-person visits and offering a variety of care modalities. Virtual appointments are every bit as important as face-to-face visits.

Attendees stressed the importance of treating telemedicine with the same thoughtfulness as in-person care. To truly personalize and improve the convenience of care, providers must offer diverse care modalities, meet patients where they are, and let them choose their preferred methods. Seamless, patient-centric technology will be essential to achieving this.

The spirit of “radical collaboration” was palpable, with companies increasingly partnering to provide comprehensive telemedicine solutions across the patient journey. In some cases, this entails corporate mergers, but often it’s just good old collaboration. Health systems are abandoning point solutions in favor of unified platforms. Building trust and developing responsible AI practices were also major topics.

The well-publicized nursing shortage put virtual nursing in the spotlight. AI and video allow nurses to efficiently monitor more patients remotely, alleviating strain while enabling the delivery of high-quality care. AI is also being leveraged to reduce administrative burdens, enabling clinicians to focus on delivering exceptional care.

Additional growth opportunities include AI-powered triage in call centers, where non-medical operators use care navigation technology to appropriately direct patients, as well as self-triage and care navigation tools for patients themselves.

Delivering seamless, personalized experiences that meet patients where they are will be essential as telemedicine becomes increasingly consumer centric. Carefully integrating AI and other technologies through strategic collaboration will be crucial to shaping the future of healthcare.

The innovations and insights from ATA Nexus paint an exciting picture of what lies ahead for telemedicine, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s on the horizon at ATA 2025.