Telehealth in the Municipal Health Net in Belo Horizonte: the successful experience in the interaction among specialized physicians and the professionals from the basic units

This project is willing to apply a telehealth/telemedicine model aimed at the Family Health Teams, showing its impact on the attendance net and in the continual education of doctors from the public health net, involving basic health units from the municipal net of Belo Horizonte, University Hospital (Hospital das Clinicas-HC) and Nursing School of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).
Implanting a model using a second doctor’s opinion system, doctors who are specialists and see patients in the present moment using technological information, enables clinical cases discussion with the health units in real time; it also  provides a continual medical education through videoconferences, sharing the electronic medical file and a management system of teleconsultation.

This system frame when using the telehealth resources, presents two ways of consultation: non present, “off line”, suitable to more simple cases and shared telehealth; and “on line”, suitable to discuss more complex clinical cases, involving images and transmitting clinical-radiological sections, besides performing videoconferences to cases and/or specific pathology discussion by the University Hospital (HC), Medicine School of UFMG and Medicine School of CHU from Rouen- France. This discussion is transmitted to the basic unit professionals so that they can follow and join the discussion in real time through the chat.

The project is currently implanted in a sanitary district gathering 17 Basic Units of Health. There is the intention of using this project to extend the Telehealth Net of Belo Horizonte to all the Basic Units of Health (UBS).

The developed model is run at a low cost, it is highly efficient, and it not only provides a better qualification to physicians working at public health centers (SUS) but also improves the quality of service offered to citizen through interconnection via net.