I recently made a quick trip to Bhopal to speak at the 14th annual telemedicon conference. An excellent experience! First, it is a multidisciplinary conference and so one gets to engage with physicians from all ot
specialties, and the level of interaction is therefore more varied than at a pure radiology meet. Secondly the common platform is technology and it is extremely interesting to see how each specialty from surgery, to intensive care, to ophthalmology are using telemedicine in their niche. The presence of the technology vendors showcasing their products adds another dimension. And some high tech videoconferencing demonstrations set the stage for a futuristic experience.
Preparing for my talk titled “ Teleradiology: Expanding the Scope of Diagnostic telemedicine” was interesting. My focus was to highlight how teleradiology is at the forefront of telemedicine, and sets the standard for telemedicine in general, with high-end performance metrics, including turnaround time, quality, peer review etc already in place, or at least in organizations such as ours which have a focus on quality. The theme of my message was that one needs to push the envelope in telemedicine and constantly work towards enhancing the user experience up until the point where there is no perceived difference between telemedicine service and the onsite service. In teleradiology, to some extent this has been achieved. In emergency teleradiology in the US for instance, even the local radiology group covering the emergency department is often off-site and interaction with the clinician takes place over the telephone. In such a situation, using an international teleradiology service does not change the nature of the interaction substantially and in fact, enhances it given the day-night time advantage.
I further highlighted the importance of a cloud based workflow platform such as Radspa in optimizing the efficiency of the telemedicine (in this case teleradiology) provider, as well as in diminishing the set-up costs and allowing even small centers to benefit from teleradiology services.
I also briefly touched upon the growing use of mobile technologies such as smartphones in improving the response times to critical entities such as acute stroke.
An enthusiastic response and some stimulating Q and A followed.