Seeking to encourage consults between professionals located in different establishments across the country, the Federal Network of Government Health Services is promoting theNational CyberHealth Plan. Developed by the Ministry of Federal Planning, Public Investment and Services and the Ministry of Health, the initiative connects healthcare institutions throughout the country by teleconference.
The program seeks to universalize access to healthcare, expertise and communication. So far 138 establishments including hospitals, faculties and public bodies have been equipped with remote connectivity. The plan is to have 325 institutions connected to the network by the end of the year.
The plan will facilitate remote consults between different healthcare centers and hierarchical levels to work in detail on medical cases or treatments. Regional hospitals, for example, will be in direct contact with leading provincial institutions and these will in turn be linked to national hospitals such as the Garrahan, Posadas and Clínicas hospitals, among others.
The National CyberHealth Plan will be organized according to five strategic pillars:
• Infrastructure, the Ministry of Federal Planning, Public Investment and Services will transform different establishments so that healthcare spaces will be able to work with the new technology required.
• Services, for the plan to be effective the provision of services that integrate and connect all the institutions on the same network were made a priority. These include the Federal Fiber Optic Network, the IP voice service, data transfer via private virtual networks, access to administrative applications and systems, a teleconferencing service, the development of applications and software, the creation of the Salud.ar platform (which contains scaling software for consults and provides free access to an archive of health science information and a videoconferencing training resource), a real time videostreaming service and the implementation of security systems.
• Equipment, this plan includes the installation of different types of videoconferencing rooms according to the needs of each establishment and the available physical space. Room A is for remote diagnosis, B for videoconferencing between specialists and C for training, association meetings and virtual congresses.
• Content and training with the objective of democratizing information and access to expertise. The program includes the creation of the first public access biomedical library offering free, unlimited information about regional and global science. The content will include articles, reviews, interviews with experts, clinical cases, treatments, reports, event coverage, regulations, vademecums and more.
• A medical map, this is a computer platform that identifies the medical establishments in the country, classifying them according to location, category, the services they offer, and level on the CyberHealth network, among other filters.
In practice, tele-ultrasounds and tele-resonance scans are already being carried out on pregnant women. And at the Hospital Posadas, pilot tests are being carried out with tele-electrocardiograms to study congenital diseases.
