Though it seems to be paradoxical, the new technologies of the WEB 2.0, such as blogs or social networks, they might help to bring patiens and doctors near again. Some of them, in a personal capacity, already use some of these means to inform his patients of the march of the consultation or to recommend to them healthy habits. For the present time, the majority of the population is not prepared to receive these communications. But, for the youngest, it is so natural as to speak for telephone, and much more than the printed paper.

Also it is more comfortable for the doctor: only in spite of messing about “Today I go with an hour of delay” it might inform 20 or 30 people that it has mentioned in order that they are reorganized the morning or, simply, they dominate their restlessness. Certainly, still it isn´t possible, because not the whole world has access to social networks in the mobile ( actually, many yes, but they don´t use them). But already there are experiences of this type, and his advance is inevitable.

Delay in Spain

“This is going to be progressing, let´s we want or not; we must plan and have an idea of towards where we go”, there argues the doctor Julio Mayol, very active surgeon in the Network, “The (medical) professionals we cannot hope that others do it and then to say that it is bad made”. All the experts coincide, in any case, with that Spain goes late in the medical implantation of these technologies.

An exception is Fernando Casado, family doctor who has created in “Twitter” an extension of his consultation. “It is a normal and current consultation”, is clarified by it, “only that I use an account to communicate with 1.700 patients of my quota”. There, he indicates which are the best or worst days to ask for an appointment, when he goes away of holidays or recommends blogs or confidence web pages. Also, why not, it coments on his opinions about the pharmaceutical industry, like this one: “It is necessary to be to the last one and to prescribe the penultimate thing”.

The doctor Casado has the direction of his account in the door of the consultation.Most of people happens ahead without knowing what is it. " But the segment of people to which I can come, people of medium age or young people with formation, yes, that says to me that it they comes well ", comments the doctor. " It allows me to support contact with the patients out of the limits of the consultation, but it is not a question in any case of a route to solve concrete cases ", he adds.

Nevertheless, and there are the key can be in order that these technologies are implanted to official level in a future, in this way they avoid many unnecessary consultations, which don´t owe to problems of health, but to purely bureaucratic steps. Many people ask for appointment, They wait for thir shift and lose the whole morning only to state, for example, that the family doctor can neither vaccinate them against the malaria, nor expend a certificate to be able to use weapon.

To leak consultations

The saving of time, as the contact with the patient, can be a something beneficial or a problem . Now a doctor sees many patients a day, but not they all are serious; there are cases, as the already mentioned ones, which resolve rapidly or stem to another place. Are what would happen if the web does of filter and they all those who come serious, probably 30 during one morning?” This is something that there will be necessary to bear in mind, in order that the doctors do not reject the new technologies”, there argues by doctor Rafael Bravo, doctor of primary care who already uses habitually the web 2.0 to communicate with his patients.

When he shares his consultation with a colleague, for example, this doctor uses Google Calendars to indicate what days each one touches it, and in this way patients can ask for appointment for their doctor. It seems to be simple. In fact, it is. But “ to move it to the administration was problematic”, it indicates

One of the advantages of the web tools 2.0 is precisely this: the administrative support is not necessary. They are free, as the blogs are. Bravo, in fact, keeps one of the most popular, ´Primun non nocere´. “I ´m not using any tool of the institution , they cannot censure us”, it comments. Which is, then, the paper of the institutions in the implantation of these tools ? The doctor Mayol holds that “the administration must facilitate the relation, but he cannot be the leader of this movement.”

One of the functions of the public powers would be “to guarantee the safety and the rights”. According to Mayol, which points at a risk: " It is necessary to have care because we can create castes [of patients]. Those who have more access to the doctors they are the same that have more access to the technology ". In any case, it seems that the public debate still will be late in reaching ourselves: " The administration did not find out of web point one and now one is not informing about the web 2.0", to finish off Bravo.