The Catholic University of the Santísima Concepción (UCSC) and the University of Concepción (UdeC), announced the creation of the Regional Center for Telemedicine and Telehealth in the Biobío region.
The Regional Center for Telemedicine and Telehealth will be located in the Biobío region, and its objective is to improve access and health coverage for the population of the area through telemedicine and telehealth strategies.
The UCSC School of Medicine and the UdeC Telemedicine Unit managed to partner for the implementation of this program, which also seeks to strengthen the Digital Health ecosystem in the region.
The Regional Telemedicine Center will have four axes of action: Education, IDie (Research, development, innovation and entrepreneurship), Clinical Assistance and Digital Health Observatory.
As for the last axis, this aims to create and formalize a Regional Digital Health Observatory, for the systematization of processes, data analysis, evaluation of results and decision making. This in order to favor the regional and national health systems.
The USCS will be the institution in charge of leading the Observatory: “We are in charge of the observatory, which means collecting as much information as possible that will serve the health teams to establish policies. At this time we are writing information on the level of knowledge about telemedicine in the Region, specifically in the health teams, in the community and in the students of the area”, explained Carlos Zúñiga, coordinator of the observatory.
On the other hand, the Regional Government of Biobío estimates that the execution of the project will benefit 180,000 people directly and more than 500,000 indirectly. In addition, it will have financing from the Innovation Fund for Competitiveness FIC-R 2021, for a period of three years.
