Dale Alverson, MD

Dale Alverson, MD is a Professor of Pediatrics and UNM Regents’ Professor on faculty at the University of New Mexico, School of Medicine. Since 1995, he has been the Medical Director of the Center for Telehealth and Cybermedicine Research at the University of New Mexico, Health Sciences Center.  In that role, he has been involved in the planning, implementation, research and evaluation of Telemedicine systems for New Mexico, primarily serving its rural communities using information technologies, videoconferencing and the internet to provide access to clinical services and health education. Recently, his center received a large $15.5 million award from the Federal Communications Commission Rural Health Care Pilot Program to coordinate the network engineering design, modeling, build-out, operations and evaluation of an enhanced collaborative telemedicine network called the Southwest Telehealth Access Grid, serving New Mexico, Arizona and the Southwest IHS Area Offices. He is on the Board of the New Mexico Telehealth Alliance that provides a platform for public-private collaboration and formation of a Telehealth “network of networks” and has been appointed by the Governor as a commissioner on the New Mexico Telehealth Commission. In 2007, the UNM Center for Telehealth was given the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) President’s Institutional Award for its efforts in advancing telehealth locally, nationally, and internationally.

On a national level, Dr. Alverson is on the Boards of ATA and the Center for Telehealth and e-Health Law (CTeL) based in Washington DC that are involved in policies, regulations and legislation that affect Telehealth on a broad level. He was elected Vice President of ATA in 2008 and will become President in 2010. He was also the ATA representative on the Joint Commission Ambulatory Health Care Professional and Technology Advisory Committee. He is a founder and prior chairman of the Four Corners Telehealth Consortium addressing regional interstate coordination between Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.

He has also been involved in international Telehealth projects, particularly with Latin America. One initiative includes the use of river boats in the Amazon region that act as mobile floating clinics with development of uplink-downlink Telemedicine capability in the depths of the Jungle. These endeavors include collaboration with the Iberoamerican Science, Technology and Education Consortium (ISTEC) that includes over 100 universities in Latin America and Spain, and the American Telemedicine Association Latin American Caribbean Chapter (ATALACC). Other potential international initiatives include development of telehealth programs in Nepal, India, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa.

Dr. Alverson has been an investigator on a number of Telehealth research programs, including “Project TOUCH (Telehealth Outreach for Unified Community Health)”, a joint collaborative effort with the University of Hawaii, the University of New Mexico and the Maui and UNM High Performance Computing Centers, incorporating virtual reality simulation and virtual collaboration over the Next Generation Internet Access Grid that can support “just-in-time” team training or “serious games” in which people can participate together in a virtual world even if they’re 1000’s of miles apart. He has worked with the Uniform Services University National Capital Area Medical Simulation Center in this effort in conjunction with the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) at the US Army Medical Research and Material Command (USAMRMC), Ft. Detrick, MD. He is on the national Board of Advanced Initiatives in Medical Simulation (AIMS) to promote the integration of simulation in healthcare for education, training and performance assessment.