Medicine Projects
Delivering on 'telehealth for underserved populations'
In 2005 the U21 Health Science Group began a pilot project that involved U21 universities providing support to an underserved health facility in a developing country. The initial aim was to provide support to local doctors via information and communications technology - telehealth - and to involve U21 medical students on elective placements.
The pilot project commenced in June 2005 at the Ragama Hospital in northern Colombo, Sri Lanka. A number of features distinguished it from traditional telemedicine projects in developing countries. These were:
- placing U21 medical students at the recipient hospital
- using the medical students to operate the telehealth equipment and provide a link between the hospital doctors and the telehealth network
- obtaining follow up data on patients managed by telehealth, again using the medical students, to assess the clinical effect of the e-health intervention.
In late 2005, the pilot project was transferred to the Tabubil Health Centre in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. The Tabubil Health Centre has a 24-bed hospital, a 10-bed isolation unit and an outpatients unit that treats some 12,000 patients each month.
The presence of a medical student has facilitated e-referrals by relieving the pressure on the local doctor to undertake the necessary clerical and technical work. The students have reported a rewarding elective experience which appears to have the potential to increase the ease with which heavily burdened medical staff in developing countries can make use of e-referrals.
The follow up data represents a unique opportunity to assess the longer-term value that e-consulting provides to the patient and the local medical staff. To our knowledge this is the first time that such data have been collected. In one case the referring doctor reported that "By providing a clear diagnosis, money was saved on trialling a variety of other treatment regimens and also preventing an unnecessary referral [i.e. patient transfer] to a specialist in Australia. This referral was very useful in both diagnostic and management sense but also in an educational sense. Diagnosis was made clear and the variety of treatment options and possible complications canvassed."
Clinical placement opportunities are currently available for medical students at Tabubil Hospital. The project is led by Professor Richard Wootton, Director of Research at the University of Queensland's Centre for On-line Health (COH). For further details, go to the link on the COH web site at http://www.uq.edu.au/coh/index.html?page=39537
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