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Associate Professor, Health Telematics Unit, Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary
Dr. Scott holds a Fulbright New Century Scholarship, investigating ‘Challenges of Health in a Borderless World’. His primary areas of research interests are in policy aspects and evaluation of e-health – the use of all information and communications technologies (ICT’s) to mediate health, healthcare, health education, and health research. In particular he focuses on identifying and defining suitable outcome indicators for rigorously demonstrating the value of telehealth initiatives in the delivery and facilitation of healthcare. Through involvement with the Fulbright program, his interests have extended to examining the role of e-health in the globalisation of healthcare, and investigating policy, technology, and evaluation aspects impacting the implementation of e-health in a borderless world.
Dr. Scott is a Founding and Board member of the Canadian Society of Telehealth (CST), Chairperson for the CST Research Committee and member of the CST International Committee. He also remains active in other professional associations.
HIS recent project, called the National Telehealth Outcome Indicators Project (NTOIP), focused on the issue of outcome indicators for evaluation of telehealth. Specifically, NTOIP sought to identify, define and seek consensus on outcome indicators, and to describe a core set of indicators that could be used by the broad telehealth community. Consistently used, these indicators will help rapidly develop the required evidence base. (for more information see www.md.ucalgary.ca)
Professor Wootton is the director of research at the Centre for Online Health (COH), University of Queensland, Australia. The COH is exploring the role of new technologies in medicine, with a view to obtaining quantitative evidence of cost-effectiveness in health care delivery, training and education. For example, Professor Wootton is running a research trial of a novel telepaediatric service, which is being delivered to various hospitals in Queensland – preliminary results are most encouraging and demonstrate substantial patient travel savings for the health care provider. The work is funded by a commonwealth grant of over $1M.
In 2002, Professor Wootton organized a conference on a novel theme, Successes and Failures in Telehealth. This has since become an annual event. He is a regular invited speaker at telemedicine conferences around the world. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Health Telematics Unit at the University of Calgary in 2002.
Professor Wootton has published about 160 articles in peer-reviewed journals, of which over 60 relate to telemedicine and telehealth. He established a series of textbooks on telemedicine, published by Royal Society of Medicine Press, of which the latest Telepsychiatry and e-Mental Health (eds. Wootton, Yellowlees & McLaren) was published in January 2003.
Professor Wootton is the Editor of the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, an international peer-reviewed journal. He was the founder chairman of the UK’s academic Telemedicine and e-Health Section of the Royal Society of Medicine and was the government’s representative to the G8 telemedicine project.