Telemedicine in Service of Family Doctors in North Macedonia: Search for the New Frontier for Medical Professionals

Introduction: Innovative medical technologies such as telemedicine, telehealth, and artificial intelligence have great potential in North Macedonia. Our nation was a leader in the region in advancing internet connections. A key barrier to wider adoption has been human resources.

Material and Methods: Family doctors are skilled and trained enough to accept and use these technologies in everyday work. In our School of Family Medicine, we thought that additional training was necessary. This was the key objective of our task—if telemedicine and telehealth are presented to a critical mass of doctors as yet another tool that will make their day-to-day work easier, the “chain reaction” of adopting and applying telemedicine and telehealth would not be stopped.

Discussion: To further study this objective, we started with a pilot project with a course in telemedicine and telehealth for future family medicine specialists. Telepsychiatry and teledermatology were the first modules to be taught. In addition, telehealth care equipment was also presented to participants.

Conclusion:Participants’ reactions were very positive.