Technology for improving accessibility of end-of-life care: Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes Project.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To describe how Project ECHO works and to analyze what has been published on Project ECHO Palliative Care (Project ECHO PC) over the last 18 months.

RECENT FINDINGS: Only two articles on Project ECHO PC have been published over the last 18 months: a descriptive study of experiences in seven health centers of the United States, the United Kingdom, Uruguay and India; and a quantitative and qualitative study of the impact of the teleECHO clinic on physicians and nurses in Northern Ireland, which reports a significant boost in knowledge acquisition and self-efficacy.

SUMMARY: Project ECHO is an innovative telemedicine strategy, which creates learning communities, which use a standardized methodology and benefits healthcare professionals, particularly primary care providers or practitioners based on remote or rural areas.Since 2011, Project ECHO PC has been implemented in 12 health centers in 4 different countries, with greater growth in 2017. It has facilitated a wider access to professional education, improvements in clinical practice and knowledge acquisition, the development of professional curricula and more confidence and self-efficacy among healthcare professionals. Project ECHO PC is engaged in several international initiatives to aid countries with different degrees of palliative care development.