CSTO expands use of military telehealth

Today heads of medical services of defence departments of the CSTO Member States had a remote working meeting on the improvement of medical support for the CSTO troops (collective forces), the website of the Collective Security Treaty Organization reports. “Participants of the meeting paid special attention to the formation of a system of remote telehealth consultations,” the website reports.
Oleg Kalachev, Major General of the Medical Corps, head of department, deputy head of the Main Military Medical Directorate of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, and representatives of the relevant structural subdivisions met at the CSTO Crisis Response Centre in Moscow. They joined via videoconferencing by the heads of medical services of defence departments and chief military medical experts of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the Kirov Military Medical Academy.
Andrei Leonidov, Colonel of the Medical Corps, head of the Centre for Coordination of Medical Support of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, reported on the current state of the system of remote telehealth consultations in the Russian Armed Forces, including in hard-to-reach and remote regions of the Russian Federation. He noted that since the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation has created a system of remote telehealth consultations, medical specialists have given nearly 5,000 consultations, and telehealth technologies are actively used in departmental, interdepartmental and international cooperation. The system of remote telehealth consultations has been used to hold more than 1,100 web conferences, 29 of them international, including those with the CSTO Member States on combating COVID-19.
Participants of the working meeting agreed on the importance of this area and noted that the introduction of the telehealth consultation system will improve the quality of medical assistance to patients of the military medical organizations of the CSTO Member States, the level of training and methodological support to their medical staff and in general will increase the level of integration and interaction of military experts within the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
“We decided that the defence departments of the CSTO Member States will continue establishing a system of remote telehealth consultations in the CSTO to provide consultative (training and methodological) assistance to medical staff of the main (central) military medical organizations and to consider proposals during the scientific and practical conference Current Issues of Medical Support for the CSTO Peacekeeping Forces, including in the interest of international peacekeeping activities.”