Italy and Albania have partnered on a remote monitoring project to prevent tumors in Albanian women.
Albania and the Puglia Region of Italy will be linked by Carestream's screening technology for the prevention, treatment and epidemiological observations for female tumors amongst the Albanian population.
Carestream Health computed radiography and printing systems were installed within Albanian National Health Service's hospitals, and clinicians were trained on using the screening technology through direct patient experiences.
Thirty Albanian healthcare professionals attended two training sessions at the breast screening service SARIS Centre in Bari Province, Puglia Region, where they underwent three intensive weeks in March 2007 and a week in May 2007.
Vincenzo Lattanzio, Director of SARIS, said, "Our aim is to screen for cancers which affect women, those of the breast and uterus, by training Albanian radiology doctors and technicians in diagnosis. As it is not possible to undertake pro-active screening in Albania by calling women to appointments, we are creating specialist units for asymptomatic patients volunteering for screening."
Currently, Italian doctors now maintain on-site monitoring of regular visits in the Albanian clinics. In the future, the project will also involve remote diagnostic consultations from Italy.
"The introduction of this technology now allows Albania to carry out screening programmes which would have been unthinkable until now," said Vincenzo Lattanzio. "The project is set to run until the end of 2008 and the information gathered will be useful for future epidemiological analysis and raising standards of prevention."
