Health Ministry launches ‘Project ECHO’ to help treat complex cases

Mar 26, 2026 News

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(Kaieteur News) – The Ministry of Health in collaboration with Mount Sinai Health System on Wednesday launched the ‘Project ECHO’ Programme – Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes, where a team of expert specialists will provide expert training to healthcare workers in remote communities to treat patients with complex cases.

The programme was launched at the ministry’s Brickdam, Georgetown headquarters.

Providing an overview of the project Dr. Caitrin Kelly of Mount Sinai Health System explained that ECHO is a telementoring model designed to expand knowledge and expertise in healthcare and education through virtual communities.

She elaborated that it follows an “all teach, all learn” approach, where participants engage in discussions, share de-identified patient cases and receive guidance from specialists or subject matter experts.

ECHO’s mission, she noted, is to democratise knowledge and improve access to best practice care in underserved communities around the world.

The ECHO programme in Guyana, she said comprises the hub team, which is the Ministry of Health’s Chronic Disease Unit, which consists of experts in a particular field, support staff, facilitators and IT support, and then there is the spoke sites which are health centers around the country where participants are health care workers that are providing care in those communities.

This project will utilise the current telemedicine platform and is projected to have a maximum participant of 300 persons.

Distinguishing the difference between the ECHO telementoring model and telemedicine, Dr. Kelly stated that the telemedicine programme is where community health workers and patients directly connect via telemedicine with a doctor in Georgetown to discuss a patient case directly and provide direct guidance.

“Project ECHO is different because it takes a team of experts and connects with healthcare workers and the goal is to provide mentorship and education to the healthcare workers to develop their capacity to provide direct care to their communities over time,” she said.

At the launch, she disclosed that there will be two complementary and parallel ECHO programmes in Guyana. The first is the Ministry of Health Chronic Disease ECHO, which will be launched today (Thursday) and is focused on primary care and chronic disease.

The second, she said is the GPHC’s Diabetes and Cardiovascular care ECHO programme where the focus is on the same chronic diseases, but more on the inpatient and tertiary care level.

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony in his address said this initiative has been in the making for quite some time now, and that it will complement the other work the ministry is doing, that is the investments in the healthcare infrastructure.

“So, we have to complement what we’re doing with infrastructure with upgrading people’s knowledge, and we feel one of the fastest ways of doing that is to ensure that we can have this peer-to-peer kind of interaction of information. Now, you might have a case somewhere in a remote part of Guyana, and you were a little bit uncertain how to treat that person, but here you have a whole community, a whole network of people who can support you,” he explained.

The minister said that at the ministry, they are a knowledge-based ministry and across the healthcare system, they want people to upgrade, and people to constantly learn.

The health minister stated that every day in medicine, there is something new, and this platform will allow for healthcare workers to share, seek and get access to latest information on ways to treat their patients.

Executive director at Mount Sinai, Dr. Rachel Vreeman in her brief remarks said that from her own experience of using and being part of a Project ECHO community in Western Kenya, that this initiative can really be an incredible way for every clinician to have connection into the kind of support and learning and answers that they seek.

“It creates this network and community where we can all be providing the same standard of care to our patients, and then when we need to incorporate new things, whether that’s new guidelines for diabetes, for screening, for new medications that maybe are coming along, for addressing even just day to day problems, it really creates a place that you know you can come to and get practical answers to those things as well,” she said.

The executive director added that Mount Sinai is privileged to be supporting this work and that this platform can really improve the quality of care that people are receiving, especially those in the far-flung areas.

Speaking at the launch event was Director of the Chronic Disease Unit at the ministry, Dr. Lachmie Lall who shared that Project ECHO is essential for enabling primary care providers to treat patients with complex or unique conditions in their own local communities.

“How this will work for Guyana is that we will utilise this platform to present disease management presentations and cases. It will give our local physicians an opportunity to do case reviews, specific case management discussions, and it will bridge the gap in the management of chronic and other types of diseases, for CHWs, medexes, and GMOS,” she said.

“It is our hope that the local specialists will have a chance to have case management discussions with external specialists, sharing their groundbreaking work that is done here, and it will also give them a chance to interact with experts in their fields so that they can improve their patient management skills,” Dr. Lall expressed.

She also urged local physicians and healthcare workers to fully participate in the platform.

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• Dr. Caitrin Kelly, Health Ministry, Mount Sinai Health System, Project ECHO

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