IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Fresh Creek Community Clinic is the site of the tele-medicine facility. Fresh Creek follows Marsh Harbour, Abaco, which was the first Family Island location in which the programme is offered. Health officials are busily preparing to launch the programme in Deadman’s Cay, Long Island next month as part of the ongoing construction of the telemedicine network by the Government of The Bahamas, through the Ministry of Health, the Public Hospitals Authority and the Department of Public Health.

According to the health minister, this latest advancement in electronic healthcare will allow emergency service personnel and technicians to monitor what occurs inside an ambulance while en route in real time.

The program facilitates Dr. Olander treating and examining patients via video conferencing technology from New Providence while the patients remain in Abaco. The success of this Telemedicine program has exceeded the expectations of officials within the Ministry of Health. Of those 42 patients examined and treated, physicians detected that three patient’s required biopsy. One patient diagnosed with skin cancer is presently being treated. This facility has proven invaluable as it saves time and allows immediate intervention in medical cases, improving patient treatment options. This also means hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings to patients eliminating the need to travel between a Family Island and New Providence even as far as the United States for specialist care.

Several doctors in eastern parts of the country are increasingly using social media, apart from telephone and web-based system, to consult or seek advice from specialists.

Chief medical officer with the Pemagatshel hospital, Dr Thukten Chophel, over a telephonic interview, said telemedicine, for the past two years, has been picking up, and the number of cases consulted has been increasing as well.

'The high cost of diagnosis, medical equipment and software are the many obsta cles to the penetration of telemedicine in Burundi,' she added.

Speaking at a workshop to look into the ways and means to popularize telemedicine that focused on access to health cares for rural populations, Mrs Nibigira also stressed the bad quality of the phone network and the lack of electricity as obstacles to telemedicine.

Despite the security concerns of IT managers, in 2013 health care professionals will continue to adopt their own smartphones and tablets in health care as the bring your own device phenomenon continues to grow, said health care IT experts.

Almost 10,000 scheduled medevacs annually, for total population of under 20,000

Despite new telehealth services that allow Cree patients to undergo certain medical procedures in their home clinics, more Cree are travelling south for medical treatment every year.

"The work goes up 10% every year" for the department dealing with medical travel, said Cree Health Board Chairperson Bella Petawabano this week at the Cree Nation Government's annual general assembly in Ouje-Bougoumou, northern Québec.

The technology, which allows patients to see, hear and speak with their health care providers without leaving their own community, has made a huge difference for five-year-old Brayden Bigoraj.

Instead of loading up to Edmonton, Brayden and his family, who live in Red Deer, say doctor check-ups have never been easier thanks to teleconferencing.

A woman from Ladysmith, Susan McAdam, sees telehealth as a viable solution to get necessary treatment for her 85-yearold mother, and I do not doubt that it may well be a success.

My concern is that the Vancouver Island Health Authority will not only be happy to provide the service as a way of cutting costs - possibly putting yet another barrier in front of obtaining publicly funded health care - but using the precedent in this case of only providing it if users can pay for it themselves.

The service, accessed by dialing 811, is already operational and taking calls.

"Islanders can talk to a registered nurse for health advice, when and where they need it, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Health Minister Doug Currie in a news release.

When a family physician identifies a patient with questionable heart noises, they can refer them to various cardiac-specialists across the province, but they are only counted as a potential market for the new Telehealth program if they are referred to one specific program — the Cardiac EASE program.

"In Edmonton there's multiple different groups of cardiologists," said Josephine Amelio, provincial manager for Clinical Telehealth.

So the Telehealth idea seems like a long time coming. Sure that is more involved than simple video conferencing. There is special equipment, scheduling and security to deal with, but the benefits to this system are obvious and plenty.

Telecardiology uses computers to link two digital stethoscopes together via a high-speed data network to conduct a virtual examination in real time from hundreds of kilometres away.

It's one of a growing range of uses for telehealth, a field which extends the reach of medical specialists who practise in heavily populated areas to more remote Island locations.

It recently became the first such program in B.C. to be recognized by Accreditation Canada. To date 5,000 Telehealth consultations have saved an estimated 1.5 million kilometres of travel.

Increasingly specialists use it to track patients' health in remote Island communities. Ease of use is one reason some specialists resist making the jump to on-line consultations.

Genetic counselling is usually relatively easy, involving just a few brief consultations with a specialist. But Larade, 55, lives in Port Alice. That would mean a minimum 14 hours travelling to and from Victoria, at least a two-day trip.

Instead, Larade was one of the first in Port Alice to have a session with a genetics counsellor at the Vancouver Island Cancer Centre via a video link.

For patients in rural or remote places where there are no family doctors or specialists, or for those with limited mobility, it’s a remarkable technological advancement. Doctors don’t have to travel, nor do patients, and medical advice is delivered quickly.

One of the biggest telehealth networks in the world is weeks away from a major expansion of its availability in Canada’s largest province.

The Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN), which currently has some 2,200 videoconferencing endpoints in designated rooms in 1,200 hospitals and clinics, is turning to the Internet to let thousands of doctors and nurses access the network from their offices using personal computers.

But thanks to the MBTelehealth program, the resident of The Pas is among thousands of northern Manitobans benefiting from technology that links remote patients with faraway specialists.

"It's way better for me because it's only a short time up at the local hospital instead of having to spend a couple of days to go up to Winnipeg and come back home," says Sodtke, 60, a well-spoken, white-bearded pastor.

According to the MB Telehealth website, the program provides information technology to connect people with healthcare services from around Manitoba via a high-speed, secure video link.

At the official announcement in Eriksdale, a local patient talked about her experience with Telehealth. Using the technology to communicate with anaesthesiologists in Dauphin, she was spared a presurgical trip to Winnipeg.

Telehealth systems in Canada are redefining the medical landscape and putting patient care as a primary concern. A national study put on by Praxia Information Intelligence and Gartner shows stunning growth in Telehealth use in the country last year.

With more than 5,700 Telehealth systems in at least 1,175 communities across the country, Canada is a global leader in improving access to care by connecting patients and care providers in different, and frequently, remote locations via telecommunication technologies.