Project ECHO

The recent evaluation of Project Hamrahi has shown us that there are many mutual benefits, for Australian and Indian teams alike. We are therefore keen to sustain the relationships that have been established and so we propose setting up an ECHO Hamrahi community of practice. This will involve all Hamrahi sites, mentees and mentors who are still active or in connection with each other, meeting regularly for case-based learning, problem solving around service development or other topics of interest to the group.

Many of you are already familiar with ECHO (Extension for Community Health Outcome), but for those who are new to this, please follow this link.

In brief, Project ECHO is a model of regular, interactive, online learning that provides access to professional advice and aims to support and empower health professionals in their practice. The underlying principle of ECHO is that ‘all teach, all learn’. This non-hierarchical model recognizes that expert knowledge needs local knowledge and application for successful outcomes in patient care.

As with our original Project Hamrahi, ECHO Hamrahi will be a collaboration between the Trivandrum Institute of Palliative Sciences (TIPS) and APLI. TIPS has extensive experience in conducting ECHO programs and will kindly host the sessions for us. Pallium India has been providing ECHO training for the last four years, and in 2020 they increased their ECHO programs more than four-fold and the number of participants increased ten-fold. This confirms both the need amongst clinicians and indicates the competence and high reputation of the Pallium India faculty.

The proposed plan is to hold sessions monthly for 90 minutes at a time. If you are interested in joining this community of practice, please contact me via hamrahi@apli.net.au

Odette Spruijt