Telemedicine in Primary Care. Panama 2024

Abstract

For over 40 years, there has been experience in the use of telemedicine in primary care. These applications have aimed to facilitate collaboration between primary and specialized care, offering services such as teleconsultations with patients, remote reporting of diagnostic tests, case consultations among professionals, and tele-education. Particularly in Spain, it has been one of the most frequent and representative areas of application of the traditional conception of telemedicine, with solutions based on video conferencing and fixed stations. In recent years, a new generation of telemedicine systems has been emerging strongly, with denominations such as mobile telemedicine, ubiquitous telemedicine, personal health, or wellness. These initiatives are driven by the increasing availability of mobile broadband communications and internet tools for social computing, as well as advances in digital microsystems and biomedical instrumentation for personal use. Practical implementations include pilot projects and demonstrators with a variety of disease management models, case management, patient self-management, healthy lifestyle promotion programs, and life support environments.  Independent at home. Many of these achievements have originated from different premises than the reality of primary care in our country. In this context, it seems appropriate to consider how to harness the potential of this new generation of personal, mobile telemedicine systems and to have suitable supports to enhance primary care.