Enhancing Rural Healthcare in Emerging Countries through an eHealth Solution

Abstract

This paper investigates the applicability of an eSolution that improves health care delivery settings in the rural parts of the developing world and discusses about a proposed patient-centric eSolution that suits the Sri Lankan setting. Patients in rural areas incur heavy expenditure in traveling long distances spending lot of time to consult Specialists in cities due to the lack of Specialists in their areas. This issue can be addressed by an eSolution that makes appropriate use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Telemedicine technologies which enables the patient to consult a Specialist through eConsultation. The main benefit of implementing such an eSolution is that, it ensures the availability of the Specialist across a distance at many eClinics within the shortest possible time frame. This paper also provides taxonomy of technology choices for connectivity and communication software for conferencing and discusses the overall solution that was proposed for use, considering its adaptability and appropriateness in a developing country perspective.