Internet and healthcare in Brazil: the role of the Working Group for Healthcare (GT Saúde).
This paper introduces the GT Saúde initiative in Brazil. The group is part of the Brazilian Internet project, which goals are to depict how Internet can be useful to the society. The mission of the GT Saúde group is to foster Internet applications on the healthcare area. The main projects currently under development are presented: Multicom-21, using large bandwidth connections on telemedicine; the Unified Health Record, using Internet and smart-cards for a national minimum patient data set; the Brazilian Virtual Hospital, that presents a large amount of useful information and links for healthcare professionals and people in general; the National Healthcare Information Network (RNIS), that uses Internet as a medium for data exchange among the state secretaries and publishing statistics from the national healthcare system (SUS) for general public access; and finally the virtual university proposal, which uses Internet for education and is offering its first course on nutrition. The heterogeneity of the projects is meant and is part of the group's task, which is to cover the subject as widely as possible. Through this 'demonstration' projects the group is trying to prove the usefulness and benefits of using Internet technologies, even (or mainly) on a developing country with an inadequate healthcare situation. In its short existence the GT Saúde group has achieved several of its original goals. The most relevant accomplishments are: putting together different groups, eliciting synergy across the projects and encompassing a broad spectrum of applications (the 'demonstration factor').
Tachinardi
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Divisiao de Informatica, InCor, São Paulo, Brazil. tachinardi@incor.usp.br
D001938:Brazil; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D004501:Education, Medical; D006801:Humans; D007256:Information Systems; D020407:Internet; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D052756:Nutritional Sciences / Q000193:education; D009862:Online Systems; D010355:Patient Identification Systems; D011634:Public Health; D017216:Telemedicine; D014584:User-Computer Interface