The centre, which uses video to link specialists to patients thousands of kilometres away, is one of a handful in the country that have the facilities, and its services are only possible because the doctors at the centre and with the patient are paid a salary by Queensland Health, which also funds the technology involved.
The centre's deputy director, Anthony Smith, predicts the number of online consultations will jump if Labor wins the election and releases its promised funding for online consultations from July 1 next year.
Dr Smith said the Labor announcement was excellent news and would help "counteract the true costs of delivering telemedicine services -- including clinician time and the operational support, which goes well beyond the basic technical infrastructure".
"Telemedicine has tremendous potential to improve equity of access to health services in a cost-effective manner," Dr Smith said.
Endocrinologist Jenny Batch used the Centre for Online Health's facilities to provide a routine online consultation yesterday, advising a mother whose five-year-old son had a range of congenital health and developmental problems.
"The most important benefit is for the rural patients . . . because they have essentially equal access to specialist medical support," Professor Batch said. "They can access that without leaving their community -- they don't have to disrupt their family and work.
"Using the technology has allowed me to provide much more support to regional families, and also to regional practitioners -- they are often working in difficult circumstances and with complicated cases."
Dr Smith said the rollout would need careful planning because it was imperative the new services were integrated well with the rest of the health system.
A paper Dr Smith co-authored for the Medical Journal of Australia last year found "numerous examples of telemedicine failures around the world" where the facilities were underused.
Similar problems had been encountered in Queensland, where online consultations between Brisbane and Mackay were a regular event but similar equipment in Rockhampton was underused because staff had been less well trained in how to use it.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Adam Cresswell
Quelle/Source: The Australian, 17.08.2010
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