Integration of telemedicine into emergency medical services.

We developed an integrated model of telemedicine services in emergency medical care. The architecture was designed to support pre-hospital management. The experimental work was carried out with the collaboration of the emergency medical services (EMS) in Madrid. Two different study populations were defined: a control population using conventional EMS protocols and a population using the telemedicine system. The telemedicine system was based on a telepresence service; electrocardiograms and images were transmitted from the ambulance to the health emergency coordination centre. The cost of dealing with 100 patients using telemedicine was C6030 less than the cost of conventional care. The response times using telemedicine were significantly lower.