ViVE and American Heart Association host first national summit on integrated telehealth
December 16, 2025
National leaders convened at the first integrated telehealth summit hosted by UNC-Chapel Hill ViVE and the American Heart Association Center for Telehealth.
Saif Khairat, PhD, MPH, a professor and Beerstecher-Blackwell Distinguished Term Scholar at the UNC School of Nursing, and his team at the National Institutes of Health-funded Center for Virtual Care Value and Excellence (ViVE) at UNC-Chapel Hill, in partnership with the American Heart Association Center for Telehealth, hosted the first annual national summit on integrated telehealth Oct. 22–23, 2025.
The summit convened national leaders from health systems, advocacy organizations, payers, government, clinical practice and research to chart the future of integrated telehealth.
During the Transforming Telehealth workshop, participants worked to define a framework that embeds telehealth within routine care to improve access and value. The effort focused on moving telehealth beyond standalone services and into standard clinical workflows.
“This summit proved that when science, delivery and policy meet, Integrated Telehealth becomes a practical standard, not a slogan,” Khairat said. “The playbook we produced with AHA is already feeding national discussions on reimbursement, quality and language access so every patient can complete every visit with confidence.”
The summit builds on a broader collaboration between the American Heart Association and UNC-Chapel Hill ViVE to advance evidence-based telehealth research, education and implementation. ViVE is funded by the National Center for Advancing Clinical and Translational Science, a component of the National Institutes of Health.
More information on this joint effort to advance integrated virtual care is available through the American Heart Association newsroom.
