Christina Herrin, government relations manager of health policy at The Heartland Institute, discusses the benefits of telehealth with Dr. Colin Banas. COVID-19 has dramatically changed the way we live our daily lives and has given more reason to make telehealth a permanent solution to accessing affordable and quality health care.

Colin Banas is an Internal Medicine Hospitalist and the former Chief Medical Information Officer for VCU Health System in Richmond, VA prior to stepping down after 15 fulfilling years to pursue consulting. He is proud to have testified before the U.S. Senate and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) on the topic of Health IT and the Meaningful Use Program. Banas is also a former Health IT Fellow for the ONC. His interests center on the role of big-data and analytics on patient outcomes as well as novel forms of Clinical Decision Support, those that are outside of the realm of traditional rules and alerts, and include real-time dashboarding and intuitive usability designs. He also helped spearhead the VCU effort to participate in the Open Notes initiative, where patients have access to their clinical documentation in real time. In 2017 Dr. Banas was humbled to receive the HIMSS-AMDIS award for Physician Executive of the Year from his peers.