Telemedicine is gaining momentum

More than four thousand telemedicine consultations with the whole country were conducted by specialists of the NMIC of Radiology only in the first three months of this year. For the whole of last year there were more than 14.5 thousand of them.

This format of consultations using the “Telemedicine system of remote consultations at the federal and regional levels” of the Ministry of Health  Russia has been working in our Center since 2016. The first consultation was carried out with the Khanty-Mansiysk District Clinical Hospital on May 26, 2016, so it will soon be seven years.

The innovation was quickly recognized by colleagues, especially from remote oncological dispensaries, and played a very important role in ensuring the continuity of the process of treating malignant neoplasms during the Covid-19 pandemic. For comparison: in 2019, 60 patients received a response in March, and this year for the same month – already 1590, that is, 26 times more! Most of the applications come to us in the profile of “oncology” and “radiology”, and, given that our branch of the N.A. Urology Research Institute. Lopatkina is the main institution for urological diseases, a lot of questions come from specialists of this profile.

The most “active” today is the Central Federal District – 1428 times in the first quarter of 2023 and 5150 times in total, our Center consulted colleagues from this federal district in 2022. Among the leaders in the number of responses received in the Central Federal District are Yaroslavl, Kursk and Lipetsk. In second place is the Volga Federal District with the championship of Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Chuvashia. In the Volga Federal District, 4390 patients received telemedicine consultations last year. In the North Caucasus Federal District, colleagues from the Stavropol Territory and Ingushetia National Medical Research Center were consulted most often.

-Moreover, we must understand that the growth of applications for the opinion of federal doctors does not mean that local oncologists do not understand something or do not work enough. Just the opposite, – emphasizes the General Director of the NMIC of Radiology of the Ministry of Health of Russia, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrey Kaprin. – After all, in order to correctly report a patient at such a serious consultation, you need to understand the issue well, and properly prepare the patient and his medical history, and understand and hear the advice of a colleague. And sometimes you need courage to defend your opinion in this dialogue. Therefore, I am sure that the more often people come to us from a certain region, the more deeply its doctors are immersed in the topic and know what is interesting in our branches. And vice versa. If few people seek help and advice from NMICA specialists, the lower the level of assistance on the ground. 

-According to the regulations, we are obliged to respond to any request within 7 working days, – says the head of the telemedicine group of the NMIC Radiology of the Ministry of Health of Russia   Vladimir Kuznetsov. – The scheme is simple: any patient from the region through his attending doctor, or the doctor himself, if necessary, can seek a second opinion, consultation, advice from our specialists. To do this, you do not need to go anywhere – it is enough to send a request through the telemedicine system of the Ministry of Health, to which all state healthcare institutions of the country can connect. Every day we register from 70 to 100 requests, and thus about 400-500 requests for a doctor-doctor consultation are in operation every day.

A lot of requests come to us from specialists of other NMICS, since an oncologist’s consultation may be required for a patient with another pathology – cardiovascular, endocrine, hematopoietic.  NMIC of Radiology, if necessary, applies to the relevant national centers. This process is mutual. For example, in just three months of this year, we consulted 252 patients from the Vishnevsky National Research Medical Center of Surgery in the format of a joint consultation.

Telemedicine is playing an increasingly important role in the fight against cancer. In addition to consultations on the “doctor-doctor” system, such a type of experience exchange as live broadcasts from operating rooms with master classes of the country’s leading surgeons is gaining popularity.  Today, no serious congress or forum is complete without including this accessible way of communication and knowledge transfer between colleagues from the most remote corners of the country.

Press Service of the NMIC of Radiology of the Ministry of Health of Russia