This Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) aims to support research that generates evidence on the real-world effectiveness of telehealth collaboration among healthcare providers for consultation, second opinions, and other purposes, referred to as provider-to-provider telehealth (PPT). PPT offers remote access to critical health expertise that might not exist locally in certain communities. For the purpose of this NOSI, PPT is defined broadly to include any health technology meant to connect healthcare providers to one another for the care of patients (e.g., video, chat or audio consults with a clinical specialist for patients under the care of a primary care clinician located in another healthcare facility).
Research supported by this NOSI is expected to:
- Contribute to the advancement of health equity and access to care in rural communities through implementation research focused on telehealth-guided provider-to-provider communication;
- Stimulate evidence-based interventional and observational research to investigate the real-world effectiveness of provider-to-provider telehealth in managing the health of rural populations while observing, gathering, and assessing information on implementation;
- In settings where evidence of clinical effectiveness of PPT is robust, develop and test implementation strategies while observing and gathering information on the intervention’s impact on relevant outcomes.
This NOSI is intended to support the use of these telehealth interventions and tools aimed at the prevention, management and treatment of heart, lung, blood, and sleep (HLBS) conditions (NHLBI), and of cancer (NCI) in rural communities.
In addition to funding consideration by participating ICs, meritorious applications may be supported jointly by a participating IC and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) through IDeA co-funding.