Airedale NHS Foundation Trust and Western Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, as part of a 'Better Training Better Care' pilot sponsored by Health Education England, have joined forces with Virtual College to develop a free online training course: An Introduction to Telemedicine.

Telemedicine enables direct video communications between healthcare professionals, patients and their carers. Airedale Hospital has been using telemedicine for direct patient care services since 2006.

The course aims to raise awareness of the opportunities for delivering healthcare differently and more efficiently, demonstrating some of the possible uses of telemedicine in different clinical and educational settings.

The free online course is aimed at all clinicians working across primary or secondary care settings along with their management teams. It highlights some new ways of working using telemedicine to support improvements in clinical safety and quality.

The course includes a section on how to conduct effective telemedicine consultations. In addition to looking at the common telemedicine functionality, factors such as clinical and information governance, pathway redesign and the uses of telemedicine in educational and training scenarios are considered promoting the practical uses of telemedicine as a clinical training and supervision tool.

Telemedicine can help avoid unnecessary visits and admissions to hospital, reduce the length of stay for patients admitted to hospital and is also beneficial in supporting care outside hospital.

The course conforms to CPD guidelines and is offered free of charge to those working within NHS organisations. Go to https://telemedicine.healthcareea.co.uk/.