Conference Recap: A New Chapter for the UMTRC

From June 12^th to 14^th, the Upper Midwest Telehealth Resource Center partnered with our parent organization, the Indiana Rural Health Association, to hold the 25^th IRHA Annual Conference. This was a change for the UMTRC, which has held a separate conference for the past four years. Despite this change, we were able to have a fantastic event and connect with telehealth professionals from throughout our region. We are grateful for the participation and engagement of our stakeholders, who helped to make this year’s biggest UMTRC event a success.

Telehealth Track

The UMTRC held a separate track of speakers that were focused on a number of difference telehealth topics. The UMTRC welcomed speakers from CareSimple, Beam Healthcare, and more to come and provide valuable insights into a number of telehealth topics. They spoke on a host of topics from remote patient monitoring and telehealth in libraries to artificial intelligence and other emerging health technologies. We were lucky to have a fantastic lineup of speakers with interesting and relevant insights to share.

We were also joined by our NCTRC partners from the National Telehealth Technology Assessment Center (TTAC) who set up a telehealth demo room, allowing participants to interact with telehealth technology without the stress or pressure of a vendor involved. TTAC staff were also there to answer questions and provide honest assessments of the latest updates in telehealth technology.

Other Notable Events

Beyond the telehealth track, the IRHA conference featured notable keynote speakers Alan Morgan, MPA, Breanca Merritt, PhD, and Erin Brockovich. All three provided valuable insights on the state of public health from their unique perspectives. Guests were also able to network with other professionals at our welcome reception and connect with exhibitors on the exhibit floor.

By combining our conference with the Annual IRHA Conference, we were able to reach a wide range of people and provide telehealth information to those who might not have been aware of its benefits otherwise. Telehealth can be used in a wide variety of ways – we were excited to provide that information to a potential new audience outside of our usual stakeholders. Hopefully our UMTRC guests learned a bit more about rural health and our IRHA guests learned about how they can use telehealth in the future!

Thanks again to all of our attendees – we hope to see you at another UMTRC event soon!

If you have opinions about our conference, we’d love to hear them! Follow the link to fill out our survey over the 2023 conference and let us know what our future conferences should look like.