Between 1972 and 1975, in the United States, one of the main North American companies started a project in an Indian reservation in Arizona, which transformed and is still transforming the world in the field of radiography at a distance, which gave rise to the emergence of teleradiology.
In order to take x-rays in a place with little technology and difficult access, this project was funded, where a van equipped with a portable x-ray machine communicated remotely with a team of doctors from a hospital in San Francisco. Some other projects have existed, but due to low funding they could not continue.
Technological Advancement:
In the 1970s, and gaining even more strength in the 1980s, technology was constantly advancing, especially in the development of computers, software, and hardware, which boosted and enabled the commercialization of teleradiology.
In view of the past decade, there has been a gigantic change in teleradiology compared to today. With the internet and the improvements in communication media, Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS), and Radiology Information System (RIS), teleradiology became even easier and started to intensify a lot, especially in the United States!
Emergence of Teleradiology in Brazil:
In Brazil, teleradiology increased its strength in the mid-2000s, when the Brazilian College of Radiology (CBR), founded in 1948 in São Paulo, created in 2005 its first board to address this issue. It was discussed about what would be ethical, how we could work in the best way possible, and mainly how this relationship between doctor and patient would be.
With the result of some studies we’ve seen that the benefits and advantages of teleradiology are huge. It is much easier for a radiology service that is in a countryside city, which often suffers from a lack of technology, medical specialties, and even patient mobility, to have the exam seen by a trained specialist in large centers.
Alberto Cardoso, 54 years, had a heart attack while hospitalized in an Emergency Care Unit (UPA) in Sobradinho-DF, in November 2020. With the agility in care and the fast communication between doctors via computers, Alberto was able to recover. “If it wasn’t for telemedicine, I wouldn’t be alive,” Alberto acknowledges about the service.
So how do we achieve this reading of reports and certain types of exams? This is done by digitizing the images, which are taken to the cloud, and through our system, the doctor accesses these images and can complete the report.
There must be rigorous criteria for the storage and distribution of these images, and there are a series of norms that enable their security, such as the “Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine” model, created for this regulation.
