System of telemedicine services designed for family doctors' practices

The main goal of the most European telemedicine programs is to increase access to emergency and primary care; however, telemedicine presents both profound opportunities and challenges to general practice/family medicine. The aim of this project is to develop and demonstrate a regional primary care teleconsulting system in Poland linking an academic family medicine center and 10 family doctors' practices (both urban and rural) within a range of 100-200 km, serving a local population of 25,000 individuals. It is designed to support real-time consultations among health care providers via a computer network, provide secure access to multimedia patient records, and facilitate an innovative home monitoring and remote care from doctors to their patients. The entire process (planned for 3 years) includes: selecting the best technology (i.e., teletransmission system, communication protocols, etc.) and equipment; preparing the assumptions and conditions for formats and transmission rates; analysis of the existing techniques of compression and preparing own specific solution; finding an optimal infrastructure (i.e., equipment and communication configuration); implementing the system; evaluation of the medical, economic, organizational, and sociological aspects of the system (i.e., accessibility to primary health care, cost feasibility and cost-effectiveness of telemedicine services, quality of care assessment, etc.). The project offers the potential to improve: access to high-quality primary health care; the patient-physician bond and the attending physician's level of confidence; education of family doctors; use of expensive resources; and a convenient mode of delivering medical services to the patient.