PROFESSIONAL interests may shoot down remote teleradiology
publication date: Apr 23, 2009
Remote teleradiology, where a team of radiologists in a single, central location analyse imaging results from across a country or a continent, sounds like a brilliant idea.
Centralising expertise in this way should enable big cost savings and could lead to improvements in diagnosis as an expert team can focus exclusively on analysing and understanding the images.
But, a senior manager in a major operator told us, there are still major obstacles.
As so often in healthcare, the issues don’t lie with the technology, but with professional interests.
For example, the UK government has specified that any remote teleradiology centre has to be in the European Union. This is apparently stipulated on grounds of safety. That rules out the huge cost-savings that could be achieved by analysing UK images in Mumbai!
But there is a deeper issue here. “Who are the referrers in the first place?” points out my contact. “ Often they are radiologists. Can you imagine a situation where they will refer business to you, if they know it will take the work outside the UK?”
