Abstract

GARCIA-BARBERO, Mila. El valor educativo de la telemedicina. Educ. méd. [online]. 2006, vol.9, suppl.2, pp.38-43. ISSN 1575-1813.

Telemedicine as -the use of electronic information and communication technology to support health care services at a distance1- has been considered since its beginning in the 60s, as a tool to improve health care services and, except in very few situations, its educational potential has been forgotten. In the last 10 years a great number of courses for undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education of health care professionals have been developed using the www as a distance learning mechanism, but the potential of telemedicine has not been considered for professional development at any level. Development of telemedicine has focus on electronic patients records, patient monitoring at a distance, and supervision of professional capacities or second opinion, not considering the educational component of these processes. Telemedicine has the advantage that focus on problems presented to the professionals in their daily practice, allows capacity building without travelling and it does not depend of the geographical location. Despite its great clinical and educative potential, few countries have taken a political decision for its wide implementation.

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