November 10, 2021
News
8 medical-social centers from all over the country will offer telemedicine services within a pilot project. The initiative aims to increase the population's access to quality social and medical services by providing remote online medical and care consultations. The project is to be implemented by Caritas Czech Republic in partnership with the Homecare Association.
Based on the use of technologies, telemedicine is a new way of providing remote homecare services. Thanks to the implementation of telemedicine services in 8 medical-social centers across the country, the people’s quality of life will improve and they will benefit from the opportunity to receive immediate access to a consultation or to homecare services when they need it, thus excluding the physical presence in an office.
To achieve this ambitious goal, the project aims to equip medical-social centers with the technology that will allow them to provide telemedicine services, train the staff of the 8 centers on the use of telemedicine equipment and provide about 4000 consultations to Moldovan citizens.
The beneficiaries of this innovative project will be the elderly, children with disabilities, patients in need of palliative care and victims of violence in the 8 regions participating in the project: Chisinau, Balti, Donduseni, Falesti, Stefan-Voda, Dubasari, Vulcanesti and Ocnita. Depending on the needs of each individual, the beneficiaries will gain access to primary care services, urgent care or palliative care services and will benefit from specialized medical consultations such as dermatology, internal medicine, endocrinology or psychological counselling sessions. Based on the history of each patient and the current assessment of her/his health, family doctors and nurses in district capitals will refer them to the above-mentioned services. As well, through the platform www.e-homecare.md, via devices connected to the internet, people will benefit from tele-assistance.
Through this project, Caritas Czech Republic wants to achieve another great aim. And namely, bringing to the attention of the authorities the need to regulate telemedicine and consider the future settlement of these services for insured persons. Telemedicine can be the remedy through which health may become accessible to all, from anywhere.
Vasile Vasiliev, Country Director of Caritas Czech Republic in Moldova, held that “Telemedicine is the perfect solution for people who for various reasons do not have access to a doctor - either because their village is far from the district capital or the person doesn’t have enough resources to cover travel expenses or health prevents her/him from making such a trip. The implementation of telemedicine will remove all these obstacles and will give people the chance to quickly access health services when they need them, not in 1-2 months when it’s their turn for a consultation in the office.
The telemedicine platform will ensure an immediate connection to the beneficiaries with a specialist doctor or with the qualified staff of care centers.
In a word, telemedicine is what we could only dream of in the past. It is the access of the ordinary person to care and health services, a service that you can offer or receive at any time and from any place: the office, home, on vacation, during the day or at night.”
Thanks to telemedicine, communities where there are no specialized doctors (such as endocrinologist, cardiologist, gastrologist, etc.) or professionals with training in the field of psychological counselling will be able to obtain quick and uninterrupted access to quality medical and social services. As a result, both the state and the citizen would benefit by saving money and time.
"Telemedicine is practiced in the European Union, Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Romania, especially in the homecare field and nowadays is a fairly accessible that could greatly shorten the waiting time for a primary consultation and allow a rapid provision of remote medical knowledge using information technology. This solution will relieve the primary medical system, reducing the cost of medical services and allowing the state to re-allocate economic resources for other priorities” said Tamara Adașan, Director of the Homecare Association.
At the same time, considering that the pandemic imposed social distancing and limited travelling to reduce the spread of the virus, telemedicine may be the beginning of a period in which access to medical and social care becomes accessible to all, irrespective of where they are and other circumstances, allowing a constant relationship between the physician and the patient.
The pilot project, worth 345.000 EUR, is funded by the Czech Development Agency and is to be implemented by the end of 2024 by Caritas Czech Republic in partnership with the Homecare Association.
For additional information you can contact our project manager Anastasia Vasiliev via anastasia.vrancean@caritas.cz
