A Telehealth Success Story

I’ve been hearing for years about how good broadband can open access to telemedicine. It’s certainly something that is increasingly needed as rural hospitals and clinics are closing across the country. But telehealth is not just a rural issue, and a recent article by Sean Gonvales points out a successful telehealth program in San Francisco. The SF Tech Council, a collaboration of government and nonprofit entities, undertook an effort to train patients on how to use patient medical portals. What the group in San Fransico realized is that a lot of patients were unfamiliar with portals and didn’t understand how to establish a portal connection or use a portal. Using funding from a State digital inclusion grant, the group created a hands-on training effort to help patients learn how to navigate a portal. In San Francisco, the training has been aimed at low-income patients, those with low computer literacy skills, or the many people in the community who speak Chinese or Spanish. I found this story to be intriguing because it demonstrates the need for hands-on digital skills training.