Telemedicine and Teleradiology in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Telemedicine offers the potential to alleviate the severe shortage of medical specialists in developing countries and promises to alleviate some of the difficulties rural doctors and hospitals have in accessing specialist advice in Saudi Arabia. Telemedicine programs between remote rural hospitals and central hospitals have been successfully implemented in Canada, USA, Australia and in Saudi Arabia. In all these countries telemedicine has allowed the specialist to come to the patient rather than the patient's having to travel vast distances to visit the specialist. There is an acute shortage of radiologists in rural regions of the country, particularly in southern region of Saudi Arabia, therefore applications include Teleradiology, Telepathology and teleconferencing between rural hospitals and central hospitals which is ideally suited to the development of a national telemedicine network. Nearly half a century ago, telemedicine was disregarded for being an unwieldy, unreliable and unaffordable technology. Rapidly evolving telecommunications and information technologies have provided a solid foundation for telemedicine as a feasible, dependable and useful technology. enhanced access to healthcare via telemedicine will be achieved only with the ubiquitous distribution of telemedicine systems networks. In fact, the need for increased access to healthcare, lower cost for healthcare and increased quality of such care is generally inversely related to populations or regions economic status. To achieve enhanced access in our educational fields, these systems must become more affordable and both the public and private sectors must assume their respective shares in this investment and also use full point in medical educational filed. This paper describes and clarify the role of Telemedicine and Teleradiology in education .Through identifying the relevant literature and provide suggestion that might be implemented and consider in the near future. Researchers expect that this study will enhance the level of understanding and meaning of telemedicine among stakeholders, new entrants researchers and students and eventually enabling a