As part of the First National Congress on Cyberhealth, the Ministry of Federal Planning of Argentina presented Salud.Ar, a program that allows for inter-consults with specialists at leading hospitals in different areas of the country. The objective of the software is to avoid the unnecessary transfer of patients and streamline the health system in urban centers.
“We have significant technical support and experience from the Hospital Garrahan to ensure good results,” explained Luis Carniglia, the medical coordinator of the CiberSalud Program at the National Ministry of Planning. Doctors, upon entering the system with a username and password, will be able to consult with their peers and also access consults carried out by other doctors.
“From a single screen it will be possible to access the entire history of the consult, which will require some training,” the coordinator added. He also noted that all videoconferences will be recorded to form a biomedical audiovisual library to be made up of videos, audio recordings, images, documents and publications of interest to healthcare professionals.
The program developed by the national portfolio will initially feature a telephonic technical support line. “We need to understand that this policy is the result of a decision by the State to provide and enable access to communication and technology as well as healthcare. Now the challenge for the health sector is to use it and train itself it,” said Gabriel Yedlin, Secretary of Policies, Regulation and Institutes at the Ministry of Health of the Nation.
Pier Paolo Baladelli, the Argentinian representative of the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), added: “Associating hospitals with communication technologies shows the Ministry of Health’s focus on the need to take a leap forward so that the available technologies can be fully incorporated into hospitals.”
In addition, Engineer Gabriel Gric, the Director of Informatics at the Federal Ministry of Planning, noted that the program was made possible thanks to investment over the last 10 years in communication technologies, such as the 30,000 kilometers of fiber optics that have been installed and the infrastructure and equipment in the federal Cibersalud network.
Source: Ministerio de Salud de la Nación
