This Friday, at 27th November, the Telehealth Center of the State University of Amazonas (UEA), that already works as a telemedicine unit in the institution, will be officially integrated into the Telemedicine University Network (Rute), coordinated by Brazilian National Education and Research Network (RNP).

The ceremony to formalize the membership of the center to the network will be held at 3pm (time of Manaus, and 5pm time of Brasília), in the Auditorium Professor György Miklós Böhm, located in the School of Health Sciences (ESA) of UEA. The regent of university, Cleinaldo Costa, and the representatives of the institution, the coordinator of the Telehealth Center of Amazonas, Iselma Teixeira, and the national coordinator of Rute, Luiz Ary Messina will attend the ceremony. There will be broadcast by videoconference to other members of Rute, who is present in different states of Brazil.

With the institution, Rute will reach 119 units of telemedicine in operation in all states of Brazil. Among other objectives, Rute integrates and connects all public university and teaching hospitals, supports videoconferencing, diagnostic analysis, second opinion, including training, and permanent education, and web conferencing, between university hospitals and universities by RNP, and allows integration with state and local health departments, basic health units and countryside hospitals.

The network is integrated to the Telehealth Program Brasil Redes, an initiative of the Ministry of Health that seeks to improve the quality of assistance and primary and specialized care in the Health Unique System (SUS), integrating education and service through information technology (IT) to promote the Teleassistance and Tele-education, collaborative research, management, monitoring, follow-up and evaluation.

In the UEA it was also created the Amazon Telemedicine Pole (PTA), a unit of ESA, arising from the need to offer educational content, technical and professional development and medical assistance provided by second opinion to physicians working throughout the Amazon and Teleconsultation. PTA also develops actions of backing and support through Tele-education and Teleassistance, for professionals and the Amazonian population. "The physical and human geography gives opportunity of teleconsulting initiatives that have the potential to tackle the difficult challenges for patient care, enabling to obtain a second opinion to basic health professionals attending the tip of the Health System," says Cleinaldo.