Teleradiology, the Internet, and the development of multidisciplinary professional networks: new times for the specialty?

Radiol Bras. 2017 Mai/Jun;50(3):V While thinking about the aspects that I consider relevant to the positive impact that teleradiology applications on the Internet have and the opportunities that they offer for better practice in our specialty, I decided to begin researching the phenomenon of social networks, a contemporary context into which we are all inserted, not only as doctors but also as citizens, in an increasingly interconnected world. In his excellent lecture “The Revolution of the New”, the philosopher Leandro Karnal expounded upon the question: Do social networks distance people from each other or bring them closer together? He introduces his reasoning by referring to the danger that exists in the conservative position often hidden within a questioning of the problematic “new”, which is compared with an idealized past that is far from reality. Seeking to bring this discussion to our professional activity, in which we emphasize the need to “return to our roots”, attempting to elicit a more humane position and expand the role of the radiologist in medical interventions, we criticized teleradiology severely, characterizing it as a milieu in which doctors would no longer engage with patients, hiding behind technological tools, offering services that are impersonal, and devaluing those services, while creating an uneven playing field for “local” physicians. In my estimation, that is exactly where the danger lies! In traditional practice, even though we know that our reports often represent inconclusive evaluations, accompanied by outdated documentation, with printouts (still!) of the images in the original plane of acquisition, without any type of link within the text, are we actually offering quality? Does sending the hundreds or even thousands of original images on media such as CDs achieve the goal of