Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center of El Paso awarded telemedicine expansion grant

A grant of just under $500,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture will be used to further telemedicine services in rural communities around west Texas.

The grant went to the Paul Foster School of Medicine which operates as part of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.

Their plan is to continue building upon the tele-education network that was first started by the Gayle Greve Hunt School of Nursing.

Some experts say that overall healthcare may be trending towards telemedicine for many reasons, especially as the industry faces a severe physician shortage.

“We have to examine ourselves and how can we engage with patients on their level so that they can do it over the phone or over a computer,” Dr. Ogechika Alozie said. “Really what has happened is that over the last two to three years as an organization we have started to look at other avenues in which we can improve our patient care, improve our quality and our patient experience.”

Alozie said telemedicine services help doctors reduce time spent traveling, which for some, had included a minimum eight-hour round trips for specialty visits.

“How we engage in healthcare and how we engage in technology is very mobile,” Dr. Alozie said. “It should be mobile. It should be personal, it should be portable and that is really what we are going to focus on. We are going to work with the USDA and our outlying sites to provide access to our physicians and our clinicians in a way that suits them best.”

And according to recent economics outlooks, the entire telemedicine industry is growing rapidly and will reach a value of about $130 billion by 2025.