VIDEO: Improving telemedicine efforts key to accommodate growing AMD population

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That's a great question. Age-related macular degeneration affects one out of eight people 60 years old and older in the U.S., and the numbers are growing steadily. By 2050, we expect that about 6 million Americans are going to have age-related macular degeneration, and the question indeed is how do we accommodate such a large number and growing number of patients without making any fundamental changes in our health care system? So, what we can do?

The first thing that comes to mind, and for some reason we are not utilizing this enough, is actually a screening and screening efforts and utilization of telemedicine by implementing screening programs to identify pathology early and to expand access to care, especially in those who are in underserved areas or remote areas or even in assisted living centers, for patients who are not as mobile or they need help from their caregivers. We are doing it at Duke, screening for age-related macular degeneration at assisted living centers, and we are doing this with the help of Apellis and Topcon. And that’s the goal, to see whether we can bring the screening devices at point of service to them, not expecting them to come to us so that we can early [on] catch the disease. Telemedicine is also a great way because telemedicine platforms can facilitate remote monitoring, they can facilitate consultations, follow-up appointments, improving convenience to patients, obviously, and accessibility for the AMD patients in their care.

Definitely we should work on improving multidisciplinary care teams that would involve, besides ophthalmology and retina specialists, optometrists for optimized visual outcomes, low vision specialists and other allied health care professions with streamlined referral systems, very good communication channels and timely referrals. Definitely patient education and patient support systems are very important. We have to offer educational resources to patients and support programs so that we can empower them, that they know more about their disease and what kind of help they can get and where they can get it because this is a terrible disease that affects quality of life of all of these patients. And if you want to take care of them more effectively, we have to employ all of this.