The role of ICT in healthcare goes beyond imagination, the search for innovation keeps on going forever and leaves the legacy beyond for us. One such legacy worth of remembering all the time is that of AED-Satellife Centre for Health Information and Technology, located in Massachusetts. AED-Satellife has been pioneer in promoting the use of information technology for better health especially for under developing nations. Introduction of mobile computing devices like Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or handheld computer and mobile phones for information broadcasting and collection has changed the face of healthcare.
The well known case is Uganda Health Information Network (UHIN), which provided two-way information by using mobile phone network and low-cost, simple to use, energy efficient hand held computers for supporting heath information dissemination, data collection and reporting and e-mail exchange. It worked very effectively, health workers after collecting data, uploaded the data and send to African Access Points (AAP) via Bluetooth, WI-Fi from rural health facility. The AAP send the data over cellular network to server in Kampala, from there to recipients and vice versa. This has facilitated gathering data on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, data for monitoring drug usage and medicine ordering. Rural hospitals also use PDAs for capturing data on daily register forms such as inpatient, lab, HIV Counseling, ART administration, ART and pre-ART daily registers. The ITC has empowered the health workers to save thousands of lives. http://www.healthnet.org/ict
One more important of health care is access to current information. AED-Satellife has empowered the doctors and nurses by providing current medical information. For most of the healthcare practitioners, it is very much necessary to up to date their knowledge of medical advancements to treat patients. The AED-satellife developed GUIDE to help healthcare practitioners to gain access to this information. GUIDE is a conversion and content management system that transforms medical literature into HTML forms to make it accessible over Smart phones. Since, PDF format doesn’t work on mobile phones and most of the healthcare workers don’t have personal computers.
The pioneer project -Port Elizabeth started under the guidance of Andrew Sideman, director of Programs and Partnerships at AED-Satellife in 2009 in South Africa. According to director, the project is running independently and the long-term goal for the project is to create self-sustaining medical information system. So this mobile library of medical information can be accessible from anywhere, at any time, over a mobile phone. http://mobileactive.org/case-studies/guide-getting-medical-information-hands-community-health-workers
Handheld computers and wireless technologies have provided us boundless opportunities to move information to where it is needed most. It has helped the healthcare practitioners to reach the people where electricity and telephone lines are still not available. The M-Health has increased chances of survival for malaria and HIV patients. Maternal and neonatal healthcare has drastically improved in low-resource environments.
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