Incorporation of Telehealth Resources in Belo Horizonte´s SAMU: Qualifying and Improving Care

In Brazil the use of information communication technologies increased considerably in this last few years, but there are still very incipient experiments using telemedicine for pre-hospital care. This article reports the deployment of resources of telehealth on SAMU (emergency mobile assistance service) of Belo Horizonte and the preliminary results of the project, involving European partners, the Federal University of Minas Gerais School of Medicine and the City of Belo Horizonte Department of Health. It is applied to the Brazilian reality, through the appropriation of good practices existing in Europe and the integration of technology development. We have been using multiparametric monitors, videos of the patient and ultrasound, and 3G technology to enhance transfer of pre-hospital data, from ambulances, to data banks in hospitals, to improve patient care.