8 TECH OUTLOOKJune - 2019Enhancing Rural Medicine and HealthcareBy Jake Dorst, Chief Information & Innovation Officer, Tahoe Forest Hospital DistrictFrom an app that makes up to date critical care algorithms readily available, to a portable blood count monitor used for taking measurements in the home, the old proverb that asserts necessity is the mother of invention has held true at Tahoe Forest Hospital District. Tahoe Forest Hospital District (TFHD) is a rural critical access health system located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and Nevada near Lake Tahoe. TFHD was designated by UC Davis as their first Rural Center of Excellence in 2009. The designation was created to advance the delivery of healthcare in rural regions and to help expose medical students to rural medicine, in the hope that they may find their calling in the field and help address the national shortage of rural health practitioners. This special relationship with UC Davis encouraged TFHD to provide medical research opportunities in rural medicine and from that inspiration, the Tahoe Institute for Rural Health Research (TIRHR) was born. TIRHR is a subsidiary of the Tahoe Forest Hospital District and was created with a mission to develop innovative technologies and products that can improve the affordability and delivery of high-quality healthcare. Shortly after its creation in 2009, TIRHR went out seeking ideas from healthcare providers, specifically concerning challenges that they face in their rural practice and how they might be solved. By soliciting well defined real-world challenges first and then working on a solution after the TIRHR quickly found plenty of work. The Truckee/Tahoe region is very fortunate in that it is one of the most picturesque places in the country and attracts people from such technologically progressive areas as Silicon Valley and the San Francisco and Sacramento areas of Northern California. Some of these successful physicians, entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, and engineers, now call our rural area home and luckily for the Jake DorstIN MY OPINION
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