Telehealth in support of Primary Care in Brazil

Abstract

The Family Health Strategy has faced numberless bottlenecks, many of them with respect to the capacity to solve problems. The Telehealth Project can improve this capacity. The cost in terms of national dependence resulting from the delay in adopting these technologies must be taken into account. The Family Health Program counts mainly with recently graduated physicians or with medical specialists, who in the former organization of the Unified Health System would have built the top of the pyramid. However the performance in Primary Care of both recently graduated practitioners and medical specialists will not reach the required excellence without specific qualification for this field. The availability of a second opinion from specialists in Primary Care through the Internet could represent an alternative during the long period of time necessary for such a wide-ranging recycling on national level. Besides the telemedicine suggested here, telelearning also must integrate the Telehealth Project. Unrequested content and education following the "banking" concept however, widely present in the Internet, are of little use.