Telemedicine: Teleconsultation Between Medical Professionals

Abstract This article presents a general view of the teleconsultation technology and services to support the cooperative work between professionals to extend the capillarity of the knowledge resources within the health‐care system. Teleconsultation systems are here envisaged as a way to extend the offer of specialized care services closer to the points of care, and to provide health‐care professionals remote access to the images and other supporting information captured at their points, to elaborate the appropriate diagnosis or advice. The different scenarios that we could encounter under this category of telemedicine services are followed by a description of the technology required to instrument them, with special emphasis on those aspects that impact most on their operation performances. It is concluded with the identification of the critical issues that, in our experience, condition the success of any teleconsultation installation.