Creation and Expansion of a Virtual COVID-19 Information Exchange Platform Using the Brazilian University Telemedicine Network (RUTE)

Abstract

Introduction: Due to Brazil’s alarming situation, Brazilian professionals decided to create a Special Interest Group about COVID-19 (SIG COVID- 19 Brazil RUTE—the Brazilian University Telemedicine Network) with the objective of promoting training sessions by web conference for professional and medical students. Aim: To describe the experience of rapidly organizing this professional network based on telemedicine activity and share its initial results. Materials and methods: The structure adopted was MConf, a webconference platform that provides a virtual conference channel for 75 active participants and online video streaming for an additional unlimited number of attendees. The agenda started with meetings occurring 3 times a week, which were changed to weekly enconters in July, and are scheduled to be monthly in August. The interactive presentations lasted 30–40 minutes, with approximately 20 minutes for written or spoken debate. After each presentation, all participants were invited to register their presence and answer brief evaluation questions about the quality of the presentation, with an evaluation score ranging from 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent). Results: From March 23 to June 30, 2020, forty-one web conferences were presented in the areas of epidemiology, medicine (different specialties), nursing, physiotherapy, dentistry, and new technologies, with the participation of 52 speakers from 12 Brazilian states and 12 international guest speakers from 9 countries: Israel, Italy, United States of America, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Canada, Ecuador, and Qatar. The program had in its coverage 2,170 registrations by 857 participants from 135 distinct institutions. The conference’s attendance average reached up to 100 participants. Around 60% of the attendees answered the program’s quality survey; the average evaluation score for quality of transmission, professional contribution; and topic relevance were 9.0, 9.5, and 10, respectively. Conclusion: The experience of working with telemedicine was determinant to create the innovative SIG COVID-19 Brazil RUTE, providing an important learning experience on diagnosis, treatments, and outcomes for the COVID-19 crisis management.