Report on Establishing Telemedicine Services in Iran

The speed of technological changes, the advent of new innovations, and the increasing competition have made the use of new technologies as the focus of the business firms and government. Information technology has had a great impact on health as one of the areas in human social life by forming the information societies. Currently, all the health care processes are highly depending on technology. Whereas its management, transmission, the distance elimination, the diagnosis speed, and the disease treatment are necessary issues. These two major subjects have led to the formation of a new branch in medical sciences called telemedicine technology. Considering numerous advantages of telemedicine technology, the necessity of applying this technology in developing countries, including our country- Iran- is inevitable (1). Providing telemedicine healthcare services essentially involves extensive implications in both ICT and medical services. The range of these concepts is so broad that it may be probable to consider telemedicine as a cultural issue applying the features of communication concepts in health care offer, beyond considering it as a service. It is necessary to a simple telephone communication to establish a psychotherapeutic service, to use smart agents in a trans-continental relationship, using vital signs and various medical images to identify and even treat a patient (2). Remote patient monitoring or telemedicine provides appropriate solutions in urgent medical assistance, long distance monitoring, the management and logistics, the quality assurance and supervision, as well as preparation and training of health care professionals. Telemedicine plays an important role even in the fight against communicable diseases, as well as in helping injured people in disasters and accidents (2,5). Telemedicine has been most beneficial to various healthcare services in some countries, particularly in developing countries such as Iran which faces unbalanced distribution of resources and specialists in various fields of medical sciences, and to make it available in all over the country. Telemedicine services provide the opportunity to improve both the quality and the availability of health care services regardless of the geographical limitations. These services also present numerous socio-economic benefits considering the significant return of resources to investors, service providers and equipment providers can be highly effective in optimizing the use of existing financial and human facilities and resources (7,6). Telemedicine requires careful planning and precise management to perform and develop the goals. Therefore, to achieve the above-mentioned objectives and using telemedicine in a large scale, it is required to evaluate the problems and the performance of this system periodically by planning and making useful changes to overcome them and thereby improve the status quo. Although remote patient monitoring or telemedicine services have great potentials and provide significant long-term benefits to the healthcare system, especially in a country such as Iran that it’s not possible to uniformly distribute power and health services in all areas, the optimal use of this system requires the provision of resources and essential infrastructures in addition to resolve the problems and eliminating the shortcomings. It is also worth noting that for the useful and continuous application of this system, the geographical facilities and limitations of each satellite center should be considered as the reference when deciding to provide the necessary infrastructure. To increase the efficiency and purpose of this system, it is better to first investigate the requirements and shortages of each region in the fields of medical specialties as well as the prevalent diseases and health problems of the region, considering which disease and consultation with which of the specialized and technical services are considered. Besides, due to the recent advent of telemedicine consultation system in our country's health care system and its failure to implement routinely as a result of the inadequate acceptance by physicians, and the consulting hospitals' personnel, it is better to select the satellite centers ensured that there were sufficient psychological acceptance and the willingness to cooperate in the project and to prevent the imposition of this system on recipient counseling centers, which has a deterrent role in helping physicians and nurses work together to advance this plan. In the end, it is necessary to spend sufficient funds and using experiences obtained from the present plan, increasing the number and quality of this type of counseling to be more accurate than the evaluation of the medical consulting system, especially in terms of cost-effectiveness.