A suitable telehealth model for developing countries

Abstract

Telehealth allows health care professionals to diagnose and treat patients in remote locations using telecommunication technology. In few developed countries, telehealth has become standard medical practice. Over 10,000 peer review papers have been published during past 20 years supporting the clinical effectiveness and cost savings of telehealth. Unfortunately, telehealth has not been implemented widely especially in developing countries yet. In order to identify the resistance and enabling factors for the implementation of telehealth especially in developing countries, a comprehensive study has been done. This includes communication and application technologies, standard and legal issues, cost and business models, as well as user and key player requirements. The study result shows that technology has become an important enabling factor. Some technologies even have fulfilled the critical requirements such as reliability, user friendliness, simplicity, safety, security, cost effectiveness, connectivity and compatibility. However, without solving related legal issues, implementation of an excellence business model as well as user acceptance, telehealth will be difficult to be implemented in developing countries. A telehealth model with considering those resistances and enabling factors has been developed and will be presented in this conference. The model has been tested in some hospitals and clinics in few developing countries. Test result shows that the model is suitable, cost effective and able to improve the health service quality in developing countries. It is hoped that the developed model can be widely implemented in the near future. This will benefit people in rural areas, developing countries, correction facilities (prison and rehabilitation centre), schools, mobile units, disaster areas, and industrial units (mines).