The clinical librarians and information professionals’ role in tele-medicine: assisting the general practitioners working in rural areas of Kerman Province in the treatment process

Introduction: Over the last decade, the role of clinical librarians in assisting general practitioners to provide better health care has been proved. Rapid progress in telecommunication technology has emerged this question. Could clinical librarians be able to assist general practitioners working in rural and remote areas through Information and communication technologies? This project sought to evaluate whether clinical librarians are able to provide accurate and updated information to physicians. Method: Twenty general practitioners working in non rural working in remote areas of Kerman were requested to ask clinical librarians 5 questions through a phone line each over the period of two months whenever they felt they need to have more information on a matter related to their practice. Then all questions and answers were evaluated by expert medical specialists and pharmacists who were academic staff of Kerman University of Medical Sciences . Clinical librarians’ role was also evaluated by an electronic questionnaire sent to general practitioners. Results: Over 80 percents of the answers were evaluated as perfect and 10 percent as good. Only 10 percent of the answers were scored as wrong. Conclusion: Clinical librarians are able to provide reliable information to remote and rural physicians, The fact which has been also verified by the specialists. However, clinical librarians need to improve their English language and their knowledge about online search strategies and basic medication. Telecommunication infrastructure and suitable internet speed for online search by librarians are very important.