Bala Bhatt

Bala Bhatt leads the rural cancer telehealth initiative at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, developing and evaluating teleoncology service models that connect rural cancer patients with academic cancer center expertise through virtual consultations and remote monitoring. His work on virtual tumor board implementation has demonstrated that telemedicine-based multidisciplinary case review can improve treatment decision quality for rural patients without requiring travel to urban cancer centers. He is advancing hybrid teleoncology models that combine virtual visits with targeted in-person care to optimize rural cancer treatment delivery.