
Don’t blame your IT staff for all your telemedicine problems.Īccording to Kurywchak, few providers, healthcare administrators or even tech staff understand the basics of telemedicine, which - unlike the broader category of telehealth - always includes video-based transmission of medical data from a patient’s home to a provider.
Usb touchpad near 94612 how to#
Here are some of his key recommendations - gleaned from talks with him and from his CCI-sponsored Telehealth Technology 101 webinar series - on how to avoid pitfalls when rolling out telemedicine: 1. “You may be under enormous pressure to get a system up and running, but you’ve got to take the time to do your homework.”Ī self-described “tech geek” who loved Radioshack electronic lab kits from the age of five and was so shy as a child that he would cross the street to avoid saying hello, Kurywchak is now a one-man tornado of webinars, phone calls, visits and Zoom consults about telemedicine.

“I’ve seen people pay nearly $1 million to an outside company to set up equipment that wasn’t compatible with their existing platform,” he recalls. “I’ve been working seven days a week from 7 or 8 in the morning to 10 at night for places from California to Switzerland.” He has some insider advice to hand out for providers and IT teams scrambling to set up a successful telehealth system for their patients. “From that time on, it’s been insane, just absolute mayhem,” Kurywchak says. He and his wife were just returning to California from a leisurely cruise celebrating their 27th anniversary when – hoping to avert a catastrophic outbreak – Governor Gavin Newsom announced a lockdown for the state’s 40 million residents. In the wake of COVID-19, Kurywchak has been in high demand from providers forced to convert to virtual care almost overnight. Over the past 20 years, he has helped organizations around the world start up telehealth programs at places ranging from Intel Corporation and a clinic in the heart of the Amazon to the UC Davis Health System, where he served as director of the Telemedicine Learning Center for 17 years before founding his company Inc. The CEO of, Kurywchak has been working in the field before smart phones went mainstream. Dan Kurywchak is on a mission to save you from yourself – technologically, that is.
