To fight against medical desertification, all means are good. While an estimated 3.1 million French people live in areas where doctors are scarce, machines could well be an option to get closer to practitioners. Example in Rouanne, a town near Lyon, hit hard by medical desertification.
A telemedicine booth has been installed in a mutualist pharmacy in the city center. The space is as vast as the interior of a photo booth, with the difference that instead of drawing your portrait, the machine offers medical services. Composed of a reclining seat, and a computer screen, the cabin lends itself to various measures to assess your state of health. It weighs, measures your height, can take your pulse and blood pressure. It can also calculate your BMI.
If these first basic data require a thorough examination, a teleconsultation with a doctor can be organized by videoconference. The innovative cabin is able to remotely transmit the results to a practitioner.
Mixed doctors
The gondola, the medical consultation of the future? The local actors at the initiative of the project insist that this is an experiment and in no way an operation intended to completely replace the doctor. The Order of Physicians of the Loire tempers all enthusiasm: “It will be necessary to verify that all this is part of a course of care”, specifies its secretary general, Jean-François Janowiak. According to him, caution remains in order. But the tool is of interest to alleviate the burden of overwhelmed doctors in areas marked by the shortage of health professionals. “In a territory in tension, if that can relieve, within the framework of a surveillance […]well protocolized with the doctors, then that can have an interest “, he concludes quoted by The Daily of the doctor.
