Technical and scientific exchange for the creation of a virtual craniofacial team to support clinicians in remote regions lacking experience with craniofacial care

Abstract

The overall, long term vision of the grant is to plan for a virtual craniofacial team to support the work of clinicians in remote areas who may not have easy access to craniofacial-specialists involved in clinical decision making. By combining the experiences and knowledge of both centers, this grant proposes to develop a set of clinical digital tools that can educate clinicians and provide second opinions in support of incomplete craniofacial teams. This project will utilize Telehealth-Tele-education interactive technologies as an educational model in the orientation and education of healthcare professionals for cleft care, with ongoing evaluation of the formative impact in such professionals. One tool that will be developed with the grant is an online journal club for updating clinicians with new advances in craniofacial care. Another tool is the specialized educational second opinion - based on a combination of patient data that is collected for the specialist. This virtual consult allows for specialty team members to weigh in on craniofacial decisions without being at face-to-face patient examination. The goal here is to work in a collaborative manner to build on the work of the HRAC-USP team to focus on the hearing second opinion for the patient with cleft and to build on the experiences of CHLA-USC to develop a second opinion protocol for pediatric dentistry and orthodontics. (AU)