Donato Tramuto: Helping to improve access around the globe

More than 100 clinicians saw some 20,000 patients worldwide in 2012—people who otherwise would have had little access to care—thanks to the Health eVillages program created by Donato Tramuto, CEO and vice chairman of Physicians Interactive, who also has helped disadvantaged youth and not-for-profit organizations by creating the Tramuto Foundation.

Inspired by his childhood hearing loss and the temporary speech difficulties that followed—as well as by the example of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in particular the latter's belief in equal human rights—Tramuto, 57, developed a passion for improving access to healthcare for underserved people.

“I want people to remember me by the challenges I had in life,” Tramuto says. “Whenever I hear about somebody who has a disability, it draws me in.”

The Health eVillages program—created in partnership with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights—provides state-of-the-art mobile technology, such as medical reference and clinical decision support resources, to medical professionals in places such as Kenya, Uganda, China and Haiti.

“Every single day, we are getting reports back from Haiti, and China, and Uganda about the lives we are saving,” says Tramuto, one of 10 finalists for Modern Healthcare's 2013 Community Leadership Award. “What motivates me is doing small steps that help to empower other people that can have a significant difference.”

To ensure that professionals could access this content in places that lack Internet services, the tools developed by Skyscape, a division of Physicians Interactive, preloaded the information—and in places that lack electricity, they provided solar panels to power the devices.

In 2001, Tramuto created and serves as chairman of the Tramuto Foundation, a philanthropic organization that helps disadvantaged youth achieve educational goals, which was inspired by the death of two friends and their 3-year-old son aboard Flight 175 out of Boston on Sept. 11, 2001—a flight that Tramuto had been scheduled to board but instead had flown to California the previous evening.

The foundation's efforts to date include providing four-year scholarships to 13 college students, rebuilding the homes of three families impacted by Hurricane Katrina—one of which had a child with cerebral palsy—and English language training to an entire village in Cambodia.

“It is remarkable to see a family that has been through one of the gravest moments of their lives to be smiling again, for a disabled child to be happy again,” Tramuto says of the Katrina aid. “What has been unique about the foundation is the ability to take it right down to the most basic level in terms of how you can help people.”