About Us
Find out more about Arian Teleheal and 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 medical specialists and mental health experts to support medics in low resource countries and refugees in the UK and across the world by using everyday technology such as smart phones, instant messaging and video chat.
Our medical specialists, psychologists and therapists provide emergency and mental health advice to clinicians in emergency settings and to refugees across the world. In the past, we responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by providing advice on management of patients, and supporting the mental health impact of the pandemic.
How Do We Work?
For emergency care, local medics who need advice from our specialists contact our case management team 24/7 by instant messaging, phone or video call. Their patient’s case is then allocated to an appropriate specialist, who will review it and then discuss it, replying by instant messaging, phone or video call. The local doctor then considers the advice to help them treat their patients.
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.
For mental health support, our mental health experts provide support to medics in low resource countries, and also to asylum-seekers and refugees in the UK and across the world. We provide group psycho-education sessions as well as one to one assessment and therapy for high risk individuals. These trauma-informed and culturally sensitive services are delivered both in person and online in association with our partner Arian Wellbeing using its secure platform.
Our medical specialists and mental health experts use everyday technology such as smartphones, tablets and computers rather than expensive telemedicine equipment to enable digital inclusion. We also use a diverse range of volunteers and trained interpreters to help overcome cultural and language barriers.
What Impact Have We Made?
The volunteer clinicians of Arian Teleheal have 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.
We 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 mental health experts have provided mental health support to medics dealing with traumatic situations in the UK and in low resource countries. Our new partnership with Arian Wellbeing has enabled clinical psychologists and registered therapists to provide trauma informed and culturally sensitive mental health support to asylum-seekers, refugees and other vulnerable migrants in the UK through partnering with local authorities, the NHS and community organisations.
Our work has been widely published, including by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), The Lancet, The British Psychological Society, UK Radiological Congress (UKRC), and The Royal College of Radiologists Annual Scientific Meeting (RCR-ASM). It has also been presented at numerous national and international conferences by our founder Dr Arian, including at The Royal College of Physicians and The Royal College of Psychiatrists conferences in the UK, and at the United Nations and the World Health Organisation (WHO) global conferences.
Telemedicine Pioneers
Arian Teleheal has achieved several world firsts in telemedicine:
In 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 and mental health support using simple technology, and also provided regular expert-led virtual educational webinars on all COVID-19 related topics.
In 2024, Arian Teleheal signed a formal partnership agreement with WHO to provide emergency, mental health and psycho-social support to people in need, including refugees, across the world using in-person and digital health. This partnership also includes conducting combined scientific research.
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