Abstract

Teleneurology is the practice of neurology when the patient and the neurologist are not in the same place, using modern communications technology. Why should you need to know about it? Well there are some serious problems with access to neurology in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the developing world. In the UK there is only about one specialist neurologist per 150 000 of the population now, but if you think this is bad, Mandalay in Myanmar has one neurologist for 2.5 million people. Furthermore, neurological symptoms are a very common cause of acute admission to hospital. Neurologists are increasingly involved in the care of not only these patients but also many outpatients with neurological symptoms referred from general practitioners (GPs) because the consultant physicians who have traditionally looked after many of them are becoming ever less skilled in neurology. The obvious solution to this problem of access – to increase the