Trivandrum Institute of Palliative Sciences (TIPS)
Project ECHO Program
The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Centre (UNM HSC) developed an innovative and widely applicable model to provide treatment for patients with chronic, common and complex diseases who do not have direct access to specialty health care providers. This knowledge-on-demand model is called Project ECHO – Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes. Project ECHO connects medical centre experts with general practitioners and community health representatives over a telehealth network. This enables them to effectively treat patients on site who would otherwise have to travel to healthcare facilities for specialty treatment.
Project ECHO has enormous potential as an affordable healthcare intervention in communities where certain chronic diseases have reached epidemic levels and healthcare resources and personnel are scarce. The purpose of Project ECHO was to educate, train, and support general practitioners or other available healthcare representatives on the best practice treatment protocols for complex diseases they encounter in their communities. This model focused on the principles of case-based learning and disease management using the telemedicine infrastructure and internet-based technologies to co-manage patients in community-based practices.
Project ECHO® is an online lifelong learning and guided practice model that revolutionizes medical education and exponentially increases workforce capacity to provide best practice specialty care and reduce health disparities through its hub-and-spoke knowledge sharing networks.
ECHO India is a not-for-profit organization working with Project ECHO towards building capacity in the areas of healthcare, education, and others.
TIPS-ECHO
To spread the knowledge of palliative care and attain more expertise in the medical field, Trivandrum Institute of Palliative Sciences (TIPS – an organ of Pallium India) collaborated with ECHO India to widen the horizon and thus initiated TIPS-ECHO. Through TIPS-ECHO platform, TIPS looks forward to building the capacity of healthcare professionals and spreading awareness of palliative care among the public.
TIPS-ECHO program helps to connect, assess, monitor, support and educate palliative care teams across the country.
All levels of providers including physicians, nurses, volunteers, allied health-care providers (including pharmacists, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, play specialists, and others) and beneficiaries of palliative care can be a part of TIPS-ECHO training.
