With the advance of global technology in recent decades, several areas have been affected, one of them being teleradiology. In the 1970s in the United States, the first steps in the field of remote diagnostic imaging began, that is, images with the power of transmission from one location to another in a matter of seconds.
Past:
The beginning was a bit complicated; due to lack of investment, they could not leverage the initial teleradiology project. However, this area returned with even more force in the 1980s. The advance of technology, especially in the development of computers, software, and hardware, boosted and enabled its commercialization.
With the internet and the improvements in communication media, Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS), and Radiology Information System (RIS), a standard has been established, making communication between clinics/hospitals even easier.
Present:
Nowadays, mainly because of the pandemic, there has been a significant increase in the use of teleradiology, due to the need for distance between patient and doctor, to minimize the chances of contamination by the coronavirus.
However, there is a difficulty in having specialists available, and in many places there has been a shortage of radiologists present for care, even more so because of the high demand, and that is where teleradiology comes in.
In Brazil, for example, there are about 8,000 radiologists (data from 2013, but not much change), but there is a large concentration of physicians in the southeast, south, and midwest of the country, with the northeastern and northern states suffering a deficit of these professionals.
The remote diagnostic imaging systems have managed to enter these territories with low levels of physicians and equipment, providing more care and agility for more effective reports.
In Europe, Portugal is one of four countries in the world with a strategic plan to invest in distance consultations. A chronic obstructive pulmonary disease almost complicated the life of an amateur athlete and fishing champion, and of a priest. Both were treated with the help of telemedicine, and are now back to their normal activities.
Future:
The growth of teleradiology is something to be expected, and it has been happening. With technological advances, artificial intelligence (AI) has been dominating the market and is increasingly closer to our daily lives, such as Alexa, Siri, DeepText, and Cortana. And it would be no different in the lives of radiologists.
Based on machine learning, AI will be used in image recognition to aid in diagnosis, further increasing the radiologist’s efficiency and productivity.
In the year 2021 a North American digital X-ray developer is concluding a deal to buy two companies, one in Artificial Intelligence and one in teleradiology, for a total of $230 million.
Besides image recognition, what else can this intelligence help us with?
It can, for example, identify normal and abnormal tests, and give them such priority, or even distribute and categorize tests for doctors, such as: more complex tests and simpler tests.
The future of teleradiology will have AI as its main weapon, bringing even more agility, reliability, and efficiency to our systems, and being able to help and provide these tools to countries with difficulties in the telemedicine business.
