Mount Sinai Health System Receives FCC Grant for Telehealth Medicine to Care for Pediatric Patients
$860,000 Will Provide Devices With App Allowing Patients to Report Well-Being Metrics
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has awarded $860,000 to Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital to support telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The grant will enable Mount Sinai to provide more than 700 devices to children and their families who require telehealth monitoring and care, on a rotating basis. This scaling up of telehealth will be facilitated through partnerships with PadInMotion, the provider of the devices, and RealTime Clinic, which will provide an app-based integrated option for care.
“Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital has been at the very center of the pandemic and has provided care to many thousands of patients, including children, with COVID-19. As our clinicians prepare to welcome back families who may have delayed routine care, we are also quite mindful of our pediatric patients with compromised immune systems or other chronic illnesses who require ongoing follow-up in their homes. This grant will remove any obstacles that might prevent these vulnerable children from telehealth care; many families in our community cannot access remote treatment and monitoring options because they don’t have devices or they lack broadband access,” says Eyal Shemesh, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, and Psychiatry, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Chief of the Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, who initiated outreach to the FCC for grant support.
“Through the RealTime Clinic app, we will be able to take telehealth one step further and integrate patient reported outcomes that give us a window into well-being. In light of the enormous stress and uncertainty associated with the pandemic, this will be a valuable asset in our patient care,” adds Dr. Shemesh.
“Mount Sinai is fortunate to have outstanding clinicians in the field of pediatrics and this funding from the FCC will allow us to put their clinical expertise and our advanced technology in the hands of our most vulnerable patients,” says Bruce Darrow, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President, Information Technology, and Deputy Chief Information Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System.
The funding is part of the recently enacted CARES Act, which appropriated $200 million to the FCC to support health care providers using telehealth during this national emergency.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Its comprehensive system includes seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Together, the Health System comprises approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses.
As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.
Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York by Newsweek and No. 5 on the magazine’s World’s Best Hospitals list. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.