# Improving Prehospital Pediatric Emergency Readiness with Telemedicine

> **NIH NIH K23** · BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER · 2021 · $181,171

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Dr. Boyle proposes a 5-year mentored research training program to become an independent clinician
investigator leading prehospital pediatric emergency care research. She has a strong background in basic
science research and is a board-certified Pediatric Emergency Physician and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
at Boston University. Her current research focuses on testing system-level interventions to improve patient-
oriented outcomes of critically ill and injured children. This proposal focuses on teleconsultation as an
innovative intervention to improve prehospital treatment of children with acute respiratory emergencies and to
facilitate transitions of care to acute care hospitals. Dr. Boyle’s career development plan includes systematic
education and mentoring in intervention optimization; the use of simulation as a research tool for early phase
intervention testing; clinical trial design and analysis; and training in the ethics of prehospital emergency care
research, including emergency exceptions to informed consent and protection of children as human subjects.
She has assembled a multidisciplinary expert team to support her on this project, led by primary mentor,
James Feldman, MD, MPH, FACEP and co-mentor, Carlos Camargo, MD, DrPH, FACEP. Her training plan
includes a combination of formal coursework and workshops, scientific seminars and meetings, and a focused
research ethics internship. These will be paired with mentored research studies where she will test the central
hypothesis that pediatric teleconsultation (intervention) by Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers will
result in measurably safer care for children with life-threatening respiratory illness as compared to usual care.
Dr. Boyle has partnered with local Massachusetts EMS systems and an affiliated pediatric specialty transport
system to refine and pilot test the intervention in simulated and real pediatric respiratory emergencies. The
specific aims of this career development proposal are to: (1) Identify predictors of stakeholder acceptance of
prehospital teleconsultation for children with a mixed methods study; (2) Estimate intervention acceptability,
feasibility, and effect size for prehospital team resuscitation performance in simulated pediatric respiratory
emergencies using a pilot randomized controlled trial; and (3) Field test acceptability and feasibility of using a
mobile video-conferencing platform for remote assessment of children transported by ambulance for
respiratory distress. This proposal serves the dual purpose of supporting Dr. Boyle’s transition to
independence as a clinician investigator in patient-oriented research, as well as generating important pilot data
to estimate clinical effect, provide sample size justification, and establish the acceptability and feasibility of
using a teleconsultation platform optimized for prehospital providers to guide future definitive trials of efficacy. If
funded, this research will determine whether...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10240735
- **Project number:** 5K23HL145126-02
- **Recipient organization:** BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** Tehnaz Parakh Boyle
- **Activity code:** K23 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $181,171
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-09-01 → 2025-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10240735

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10240735, Improving Prehospital Pediatric Emergency Readiness with Telemedicine (5K23HL145126-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10240735. Licensed CC0.

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