The year 2007 was ongoing and the National Coordinator of the newly created, in 2006, by means of an ordinance of the Official Gazette of 12/23/2005, University Telemedicine Network (RUTE), Luiz Ary Messina, was participating in an Internet 2 event, academic network in the United States, when he heard the term Special Interest Group (SIG), for the first time. He was curious and decided to enter the session to understand what it was about. It was nothing more than a forum for the exchange of experiences and knowledge among participants on a particular topic related to technology. At the same moment, it clicked: “This could work in the health area, in the network that we are creating in Brazil”.

And it worked out very well! Quickly, the first groups appeared in 2008, important to materialize the proposal and to be examples for the community, and thus the number grew. Currently, there are 50 SIGs in operation in the most diverse areas of health. Since 2015, the system for recording attendance at sessions has been implemented based on a master's thesis by RNP analyst Thiago Lima, supervised by Dr. Ivan Pisa (Unifesp) and co-supervised by RNP specialist Paulo Lopes, with the aim of collecting information from the participants. And recently, in October 2022, the 100,000 attendance records landmark was surpassed.

“Today, we are surpassing 100,000 attendance records, a reasonable number. There are more than 27 thousand different participants, that is, there is a permanent and daily collaboration, which continues to grow. When this idea of SIGs came up, no one was discussing cases with several teams, several people from several different universities and teaching hospitals and from different regions of the country, and even periodically and perennially. Then, with information and communication technology and coordination, the creation of the first SIGs began: Ophthalmology, Pediatric Radiology, Child and Adolescent Health, Cardiology, Pediatric Urology, Indigenous Health and it went on. In 2014, then, we already had, on average, 50 SIGs in operation throughout the year, with two or three sessions a day, and this has been maintained throughout all these years”, says Messina.

It is noteworthy that registering attendance so far is not mandatory to participate in the sessions, only some SIGs linked to extension activities make this requirement, therefore, the actual number of those present at the meetings is even greater.

Currently, the structure of Interest Groups at RUTE is going through a kind of “export”. There is a SIG with the participation of members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), entitled SIG Cytotechnology and coordinated by INCA, which was approved as a permanent Working Group for community telehealth.

With the expansion of RUTE to Latin America in 2021, coordinated by the Latin American Cooperation of Advanced Networks (RedCLARA), RUTE-Chile, RUTE-Colombia and RUTE-Ecuador were created, based on the successful experience of the network in Brazil, and with its national SIGs already in operation. In the coming years, the expectation is that SIGs will be created at a regional level in Latin America and even that the model can be used in other teaching and research communities in collaboration networks.