Implementing “telemedicine” in developing countries is one way to spread the availability of healthcare to the poor in remote rural areas, says an article in Unite for Sight.
Without access to advanced laboratories, healthcare workers rely on evaluating symptoms to diagnose illnesses. Even then, the shortage of trained healthcare workers, particularly in rural areas, means alternative approaches are often needed. Telemedicine in this scenario is often limited to telephone consultations with specialist consultants and image and data exchange using the internet.
The unavailability of widespread basic infrastructure is however a limiting factor – creating a new “digital divide”.
Read more about the problems surrounding getting healthcare to the poor in developing countries at Healthcare Technology in Resource-poor settings and the Guardian article Getting medicines to the poor: solving the logistics challenge.
Dear Colleagues.
The Reason I’m contacting you is that I am part of IMIA WG for development, lead by Dr Daniel Luna (http://www.imia-wg4dev.org/). We are building of a common repository of all ongoing projects related to health IT in developing countries if you are would be willing to assist us in this endeavor. I would nedd the following data of all the projects you know off in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Furthermore whatever you can do to put us in contact with leaders of ongoing projects, I would be thankful.
This is the data set we need.
-project name:
-biomedical informatics area:
public health, clinical research, clinical
informatics, consumer health informatics, translational bioinformatics.
-tags:
telehealth, mhealth, clinical decision support system
(cdss), E-learning/education, electronic health records, electronic medical record,
nursing informatics, PACS, computerized provider order entry (CPOE), genetics.
-project status: projected, ongoing, finalized starting date:(xx/xx, not
known) ending date:( xx/xx, not known)
-location:
-participants:
-contact information:
-comments
Best regards.