About Us
Find out more about Arian Teleheal and learn more about our mission to save lives and improve futures.
Arian Teleheal was founded by Dr Waheed Arian. Dr Arian’s autobiography, In the Wars: A story of conflict, survival and saving lives tells his amazing story. Through telling this story, Dr Arian hopes to inspire others to help make the world a better place.
Arian Teleheal is a UK registered charity which enables doctors working in warzones and low resource countries to consult with expert clinicians from across the world by using everyday technology such as smart phones, instant messaging and video chat.
We provide advice in all major specialities, and, in addition to continuing all our emergency care, we have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by providing advice on management of patients, and mental health support.
We have around 100 volunteer doctors, in a wide range of specialities, based in countries including the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and Western Europe. They support local doctors in countries including Afghanistan (where we began our work) and Syria.
We initially focused on all aspects of emergency care, including major trauma, but have expanded our approach to cover assisting local doctors with COVID-19 patients and providing advice on mental health.
How Do We Work?
Local doctors who want advice from specialists contact our case management team 24/7 by instant messaging or video chat. Their patient’s case is then allocated to an appropriate specialist, who will review it and then discuss it or reply by instant messaging or video chat. The local doctor then considers the advice to help them treat their patient.
Unlike many other telemedicine projects, Arian Teleheal provides advice for emergency cases in a four-hour window, helping save hundreds of lives each year in warzones and low resource countries.
We advise in both emergency situations, and on complex cases of any kind, where specialist advice could help a local doctor.
Our doctors use everyday technology such as their smartphones rather than expensive telemedicine equipment because of the areas in which the local doctors are based, and to maximise the availability of our volunteer doctors.
What Impact Have We Made?
The volunteer doctors of Arian Teleheal have already saved the lives of many war-stricken men, women and children, and continue to do so on a daily basis. A pilot of our work across five hospitals with Emergency Departments and Intensive Care Units in Kabul, Afghanistan, was surveyed in 2015-2016, and concluded that “dozens of lives were saved” and that local medics found our work “hugely supportive and educational”.
The success of this pilot saw our service rolled out to all major Emergency and Intensive Care Departments in Afghanistan between 2016-2019, serving a country of 35 million people.
Arian Teleheal began supporting the Independent Doctors’ Association (IDA) in Syria in 2017, providing help to Syrian medics who care for 1.3 million people in Aleppo.
We have responded to COVID-19 by expanding our advice to include up-to-date management advice for patients, as well as providing mental health advice.
Our work has been published by UK Radiological Congress (UKRC), The Royal College of Radiologists Annual Scientific Meeting (RCR-ASM) and the British Medical Journal (BMJ). It has also been presented at numerous international conferences, mainly as keynote speeches by our founder, Dr Arian, or as poster presentations.
Telemedicine Pioneers
Arian Teleheal has achieved a number of world firsts in telemedicine:
2015, Arian Teleheal became the first organisation in the world to offer live 24/7 international clinical telemedicine support using secure social media channels on smartphones, with advice based on WHO guidelines.
In 2017, Arian Teleheal performed the world’s first international telemedicine consultation using augmented reality on Microsoft HoloLens.
In 2020, Arian Teleheal started supporting international medical colleagues with specialist Covid-19 advice using simple technology, and also provided regular expert-led virtual educational webinars on all COVID-19 topics.
What Else Do We Do?
In addition to providing clinical advice, we support educational work to assist the local doctors, who are often restricted in their learning opportunities because of the areas they are working in.
We collaborate with a range of carefully-chosen partners in multi-agency projects, using our expertise and learning to help improve healthcare across the world, especially through innovative use of readily-available technology.
What People are Saying
Your Support Saves Lives
Donate as much or as little as you can afford; we do not receive NHS or government money but rely on the kind donations from individuals and organisations in order that we can do do our lifesaving work