Advances in information and communications technologies provide a new opportunity to improve the access to healthcare in remote rural areas (RA) where there is a lack of infrastructure and medical experts. This paper implements a new model for tele-ultrasound (US) based on volumetric sweep imaging protocols specially designed for the acquisition of US. Non-physician health personnel from the RA are trained on the use of these protocols in a few days. The operator utilizes the medical box (MB), a specially designed telecommunication system, to guide, compress, encrypt and transmit the US sweeps through the cloud to the radiologist who performs the diagnosis remotely. The report is automatically sent back to the MB. The system was able to send US volumetric images with poor connectivity conditions in 6 minutes on average. These results of implementing this tele-ultrasound model in RAs are ...

We thank Medical Imaging Ministries of the Americas and Medical Innovation and Technology for allowing the publication of their illustrated posters and videos as supplemental material; Pilar Stewart, Thomas Chaumont, Italo Fernandez Salgado, Silvina Zabala‐Travers, MD, Nicole Stephens, and Cheree Harlee, RDMS, for assistance in the study; Jane Lichorowic and Nadezhda Kiriyak for illustrating Figure 1; and Sarah Klingenberger for help with the figures. This work was supported by CONCYTEC/FONDECYT (175‐FONDECYT‐DE), Innovate Peru (596‐INNOVATEPERU‐EDAI‐2015 and PR‐PVE‐201), and the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP DGI‐2016‐345). Dr Castaneda and all authors affiliated with Medical Innovation and Technology have a financial stake in Medical Innovation and Technology, which seeks to deploy ultrasound in rural areas. All data analysis and manuscript writing w...