The teleconsulting modality has begun to be applied in health centers in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro through Telessaúde Río, the new strategy in health.
Rio de Janeiro capital of the state of the same name has implemented an alternative for the public health service through Digital Health tools. This service, part of the project called Saúde Río, was developed by IplanRío the municipal informatic body. As mentioned above, it is part of the municipal health strategy for the new normal, which aims to achieve an extension of health care alternatives through technology and direct the actions of saude.rio to a wide platform, comprehensive and easily accessible.
To achieve the objectives, the municipality of Rio takes into account three initial steps:
- Initiate consultations and remote medical care with digital prescription option, clinical exams.
- The second step of the strategy is the application for medicines for continuous use through the saude.rio platform
- The third step seeks to expand the application of teleconsultations by decentralizing the attentions of family clinics.
The strategy that has its foundations in the portal https://saude.rio/ has very specific lines of action. The project takes as reference the concept Smart Cities; continuous improvement and the integration of society into public services are two of the main features of this concept, so access to health services is one of the main challenges. The City of Rio presented saude.rio as a mobility platform in which the municipality's health services will gradually be concentrated as part of the municipality's Health Agenda.
Saúde Rio has an application for mobile phones on the two main operating systems, in addition to a web platform. The platform offers citizens the opportunity to schedule medical appointments, schedule clinical studies, add consultation reminders, identify where to get a drug, among other options, that help the user maintain control of their medical services.
To enter the Digital Health services offered by the municipality of Rio, citizens must log in through Identidade Carioca, a new and unique digital citizen register to access each digital service in the city. In this way the citizen only needs to register once and identify himself with the same username and password to access all the digital services of the city council. In addition to Saúde Rio, there is Carioca Digital to make payments to the municipality and Escola Río platforms for students of the public education system.
Moreover, as part of the same health project, a health center specializing in virtual assistance in the city of Rio de Janeiro was inaugurated on July 13. Telessaúde Rio as it was called will provide care to patients who are part of the municipal health network. Telemedicine services will be carried out by telephone or video consultation to continue monitoring the population that has been affected by their access to medical services following the pandemic of the new coronavirus.
Telessaúde Río, a specialized remote care center has the capacity to make more than 10.000 consultations per month, as it is expected to treat at least 3.300 patients weekly. Through this center, in coordination with the Agenda Saúde Rio platform it will be possible for users to receive medical prescriptions digitally to purchase their medicines in public pharmacies that is possible thanks to recent health legislation.
The center will have specialists in family and community medicine. This service seeks to ensure continuous and quality services in a complementary way to conventional services. "Face-to-face consultation is a unique moment and will never be replaced by a phone call. However, it can be followed up in difficult times, such as the pandemic," said Marcelo Crivella mayor of Rio de Janeiro at the opening of the telemedicine center.
It should be noted that all the actions of the Government of Rio have the recommendations and protocols of the Federal Council of Medicine and the Regional Council of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro, which seek to ensure good practices in this type of digital and remote services.
Rio has a very important digitization project, which seeks to be an example at the national level. And at times like today, with Brazil as the second country with the highest number of COVID-19 infections globally, it will surely have affected thousands of people in its health care services or treatments, so it is necessary to add telehealth services that provide special attention to populations that have not managed to continue their health care is an important achievement and thanks to these tools can reduce gaps and also boost a new health system.
PREFEITURE RIVER
https://prefeitura.rio/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Telessa%C3%BAde.Rio_.pdf
SAUDE RIVER
BRAZIL AGENCY
