T@LEMED: Medical imaging tele-cooperation technologies providing medical services in Latin America

Developing countries have very high patients-perdoctor ratios that are a common indicator of the amount of healthcare that exists in a region. As a point of comparison, developed countries such as the US have one doctor for every 200 to 500 people, while developing countries in East Africa have as little as one doctor for every 40,000 people. In Brazil and Colombia the situation is not completely different according to WHO charts. The state of health of a population is a direct determinant of its development, and investment in health is a prerequisite to economic and social progress. Developing countries need low cost, sustainable solutions for the local delivery of primary healthcare and efficient access to medical expertise when needed. T@LEMED project introduces an e-health model to the provision of health services in strongly underserved regions in Colombia and Brazil. The implementation of this model is supported on telehealth technologies as well as on evidence based medicine. The target clinical applications include typical infectious diseases for the region such as malaria and tuberculosis, and general ultrasound applications such as pregnancy control, urology and cardiovascular diagnosis. In this paper we are going to provide information about the deployed medical network and utilization information for the field trials in Brazil and Colombia.