Telemedicine in cervical screening

Introduction: Cervical screening is particularly difficult in geographically isolated regions. Telemedicine offers opportunities for distance consultation, provider education and continuous quality improvement. Methods and Results: We review the current literature concerning the evaluation of telemedicine in cervical screening at the level of the screening test (ie., VIA, cytology specimen review), and diagnosis (histology and colposcopy). Telemedicine appears feasible and reliable in the static mode. Dynamic telemedicine while feasible and reliable in high resource settings must still be evaluated in low to moderate resource settings. An example where telemedicine was implemented for cytology and colposcopy in Mongolia is provided. Conclusions: Telemedicine is a new paradigm in the delivery of health care for the patient, continuing education for health care providers and a method of continuous quality improvement. Jurisdictional issues including stable power supply, internet capacity, personal privacy, must still be enhanced to make this a reliable process in low resource countries.