INTRODUCTION OF TELECONSULTATIONS IN THE BLOOD TRANSFUSIONSERVICE

BACKGROUND By introducing telemedicine, we would like to provide support for a new organization ofthe Slovenian transfusion service to ensure a uniform quality of services throughout thecountry. We would like to increase safety and to enable professional consultations by meansof modern technology during periods when no transfusion medicine specialist is present atthe transfusion departments. METHODS A system that enables teleconsultations between individual transfusion institutionsrequires a safe and coded network, equipment for the capturing and processing ofmultimedia data, a videoconferencing system, and links to individual professionalenvironments. An apparatus (Gelscope) has been developed to capture and processdigitized images of laboratory data obtained by testing according to the gel method.Teleconsultations are performed as special scenarios which essentially includes questionspassed by the on-duty doctor and qualified replies of the transfusion medicine specialistthat are sent from the consultation center. RESULTS An effective transfusion service requires the provision of uninterrupted on-duty coverage(24 hours/7 days) for each transfusion institution. Through the use of a teleconsultationsystem, it is possible to reduce the number of on-duty transfusion specialists from 11 to only2. Furthermore, the system ensures a uniform quality of transfusion services over theentire country. Validation of the pilot system has been completed and its results have shownthat a transfusion’s services provided on a remote basis are equivalent in quality. CONCLUSIONS The teleconsultation system enables professional consultations via the use of modern technology. The implementation of this system will be continued and expanded from the current 4 system in use to 11 throughout Slovenia. The computer application is modular and itshould also be suitable for use in other areas of medicine, such as emergency medicine, etc