Hepatitis C telemedicine approach for opioid users receives award
Patients in facilitated programs cured of virus, reduced drug use
A program using a telemedicine approach to treat hepatitis C in people with opioid use disorder that resulted in the cure of more than 90% of its participants won a 2025 Top Ten Clinical Research Achievement Award from the Clinical Research Forum.
The award recognizes groundbreaking achievements in clinical research nationwide, focusing on innovative studies that improve the understanding of diseases and their prevention and treatment. A panel selected winners based on published research from 2024.
“Unfortunately, many people with hepatitis C are not treated for a variety of reasons,” Andrew H. Talal, a professor of medicine at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo and attending physician at Buffalo General Medical Center, said in a university news story. “Facilitated telemedicine integrated into opioid treatment programs is an extremely effective approach to bring treatment to those who need it.”
Talal, who will accept the award on behalf of the research team at a ceremony in Washington on April 14, and colleagues conducted a study that found participants in facilitated telemedicine programs were more likely to begin hepatitis C treatment than those who received standard, in-person referrals, and most of them were cured of the disease.
Results, published last year, showed that 92.4% of the participants in the telemedicine programs began treatment, compared with 40.4% of those in standard referrals. And a significantly higher proportion of telemedicine patients, by more than twofold, were cured of hepatitis C (90.3% vs. 39.4%). The findings were not affected by patients’ extent of liver scarring, whether they lived in an urban or rural environment, or the presence of mental health conditions like anxiety or depression.
Drop in drug use
There was also a significant drop in illicit drug use among the hepatitis C-cured participants, either through facilitated telemedicine or referral. Satisfaction with healthcare delivery was high or very high in both groups. Over a two-year follow-up, 13 participants were re-infected with the hepatitis C virus.
Hepatitis C is caused by the hepatitis C virus, or HCV, and like other forms of hepatitis is marked by liver inflammation. More than half of those infected will develop a chronic infection that can lead to serious complications such as irreversible liver scarring (cirrhosis) and liver cancer if left untreated.
HCV is spread through contact with blood from an infected person, most commonly via the sharing of contaminated needles or other equipment used to prepare or inject recreational drugs.
Despite the availability of antiviral therapies that effectively clear the HCV virus from the body, getting people treated is still a problem, especially for those with opioid use disorder (the compulsive use of opioid drugs), even when the person wants to stop.
Telemedicine is a healthcare service provided remotely via phone or video that can transcend geographic boundaries and expand healthcare access. Challenges including limited access to technology and lack of trust can hinder access for underserved populations, the researchers said. Opioid users are an underserved population mainly because of societal stigma, they said.
Facilitated telemedicine is a new approach in which healthcare staff at sites convenient for a patient population — in this case opioid treatment programs — facilitate remote visits between patients and clinicians at other locations, eliminating the need for off-site referrals.
Treating underserved populations
Talal and colleagues at the University of Buffalo and other institutes in New York conducted a clinical trial (NCT02933970) to evaluate the effectiveness of integrating facilitated telemedicine into opioid treatment programs for hepatitis C against the usual, off-site referral to hepatitis specialists.
The study involved 602 adults, 61.3% of them men, with hepatitis C who were enrolled in an opioid treatment program for at least six months and had insurance to cover hepatitis C medications. About half of the participants (50.8%) were white.
Twelve programs began with off-site referrals, and every nine months, four sites were randomly selected to transition to facilitated telemedicine. Overall, 290 patients received facilitated telemedicine integrated in the opioid treatment program, and 312 were on the standard, off-site referral approach.
Satisfaction with healthcare delivery was high in both the facilitated telemedicine and referral groups. Over a two-year follow-up, 13 participants were re-infected with the hepatitis C virus.
“Using a novel approach like facilitated telemedicine to treat our most underserved populations, which in this case cured more than 90% of patients, is exactly the kind of outcome that academic medicine strives to achieve,” said Allison Brashear, MD, vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the university. “We could not be more proud of Dr. Talal and his team for being recognized with this prestigious national award, a first for a UB researcher.”
The work was supported by grants from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and the Troup Fund of the Kaleida Health Foundation.
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