Telemedicine/e-Health is one of the products of the eGovernment initiative, a tripartite private/public joint venture between National eGovernment Strategies Limited (NeGSt), the Federal Government as represented by National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, as well as other strategic partners and financial investors. The President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR, inaugurated NeGSt on March 8, 2004 with the mandate to implement the Nigerian eGovernment initiative and citizen centred eGovernment programmes dedicated to transparency, accountability and good governance.
The Managing Director, Dr. Felix Obada hinted participants at the workshop that the Federal Government has endorsed the eGovernment initiative as one of the tools required to extend the frontiers of its fight against poverty, corruption and poor services delivery at all levels of governance. This he said was made known at the three-day Presidential retreat on “Public Sector Reforms and Public Private Partnership” organised for Ministers, Permanent secretaries and Special Advisers held from the 18th-20th August 2005 at which NeGSt exhibited eGovernment products.
Delivering his first paper; “The Telemedicine and eHealth Project within the eGovernment Initiative”, Dr. Olu Agunloye, the Executive Vice Chairman, NeGSt, and former Power and Steel Minister, highlighted the basics of eGovernment to include deploying ICT tools for good governance and empowerment for the citizenry. According to him, the basic prerequisite for the success of eGovernment is the political will of Government and its programmes for reforms such as reorganisation, reorientation and restructuring.
Agunloye stated further that the eGovernment initiative as driven by NeGSt is based on Public Private Partnership model in accordance with the Nigerian National Policy for Information Technology of March 2001. This novel partnership model was also recommended by the World Summit on Information Society, Geneva in December 2003. It is a major thrust of the economic reform agenda of the Federal Government encapsulated in National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy-NEEDS. This agenda not only requires the growing of the private sector but also the incorporation of the drive, skill and funds of the sector in an appropriate way to ensure sustainable economic development, said Dr. Agunloye.
Aside from providing the platform for shared services, standards and integration, the role of NeGSt, according to Agunloye, is in provision of eGovernment applications solutions, facilitator and provider of production atmosphere which ensures that the best-in-class solutions emerge from peer-review mechanism or other service providers.
He added that several other eGovernment products which have undergone alpha and beta test have been developed by NeGSt through its partners and are ready for launch are; eImmigration, eLearning, eRegistration, eAuthentication, ePayment, eKiosks, etc.
The stakeholders for eHealth solution are the Patients, Health providers, Researchers, ePayment dealers, HMOs, National Health Insurance System and the public in general.
Alh Numan Barau Danbatta, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education congratulated the health sector for the launch and also commended the efforts of the PPP network represented by NeGSt.
Prof. Cleopas O. Angaye, Director General/CEO National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) in his address posited that “ICT in health care changes the paradigm of health care delivery to one that is patient-centred, allowing the patient to gather health related information themselves, communicate with care providers and so on. This will enable institutions and individuals exchange electronic health records and share information systems and databases to collect or deliver health information at a distance”, he declared.
In his words, “Telemedicine is the use of Information Technology for medical diagnosis and patient care when the provider and client are separated by distance. It will provide, enhance and expedite healthcare services. In launching Telemedicine and eHealth platform, the Honourable Minister of Health, Professor Eyitayo Lambo, a convert of Telemedicine, defined it as the use of Information and Telecommunication Technologies to provide medical information and services between participants at a distance. In order words, diagnosis and therapy are performed by an expert at a remote location from a patient whose data are transmitted electronically.
The Honourable Minister who had over 2 decades ago carried out a research on Telemedicine and eHealth opines that Telemedicine offers the potential to alleviate the severe shortage of medical specialist in resource-poor areas which is presently being experienced in the rural areas of Nigeria. It also has the potential of improving access to, and quality of medical care at lower cost.
Lambo while identifying the variety of medical and health services which Telemedicine encompasses, and the platforms through which it can be delivered, identified the benefits to health sector as significant improvements in access to care, quality of care and the efficiency and productivity of the sector.
In his address, “A Commentary on eHealth Project and Sustainable Development”, Prof. Ode Ojowu, Economic Adviser to the President/Chief Executive National Planning Commission noted that sustainable development has being made almost impossible due to shortage of competent heath care providers and professionals. But the introduction of Telemedicine and eHealth, he said, could easily bridge the gap, and make available the required expertise in the sector for long term sustainable development.
Tove Sorensen, Head of WHO collaborating Centre on Telemedicine, Professor Michael Nerlich, President International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth Switzerland, Dr. Oryema Johnson, Director African Telehealth Group, USA, all took the participants on interactive session via teleconference.
The Managing Director of General Data Engineering Services (SKANNET), Mr. Sunday A. Folayan gave a comprehensive insight into the available infrastructure in the country and how NeGSt can leverage on it for the deployment of eHealth and Telemedicine. In his paper “Leveraging on Existing Infrastructure for Fast Take-off of Telemedicine and eHealth Deployments in Nigeria”, Folayan explained that access is the key to ICT provision which also often constitutes the greatest bottleneck and certainly the most expensive portion of the entire value chain.
The issues he identified are: Unwillingness of service providers to embrace shared services, the possible positive impact of ICT applications on the lives of people other than the upper class in Nigeria, maximizing existing facilities for effective deployment of Telemedicine and eHealth initiatives and how the system can benefit from available in-country connectivity solutions, especially the MTN and Globacom microwave backbones.
To overcome these obstacles, Folayan recommended the establishment of policies to enhance collaboration and use of shared services to boost economy of scales, reduction of service cost by operators to encourage low income earners to mass-use of their services, encouraging deployment of wireless connectivity as a basis for affordable last mile connectivity, lobbying and ensuring government policies and directives compels operators to make certain portion of their facilities available to critical sectors of development such as Health and Education.
The challenge of eHealth is the change of attitude required to transform the old system of having pockets of hospital records of patients scattered from one clinic to another which makes effective treatment difficult, says Mr. Ogbonnaya Okike of Knowledge and Innovation Unit of NeGSt while speaking on “The eHealth Platform”.
Mr. Gbenga Adebusyi, Head of Operations, NeGSt in his paper “Fundamentals of Nigerian eGovernment Initiative” summarised the eGovernment initiative as a full and effective participation in the emerging global information network which is of fundamental importance for a country that wants to avoid marginalization from the globalization process and is essential for the full participation of its citizens in all spheres of life.
Speaking on their experience on the workshop, Dr. J.B. Adetunji of the Federal Medical Centre, Owo rated the workshop as “excellent, thought provoking and well presented”. Dr. G.T Adebule, Chief Medical Director of National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi, Lagos, gave kudos to the workshop and urged the organisers to hold zonal workshops collaboration with NMA and other Telemedicine organisations. To him, Telemedicine “is on its way to enter the Nigerian practice for the good of all”.
Mr. Sa’ad Suleiman, of Federal Medical Centre, Gombe, considers the workshop a development that will revolutionalise Health care delivery in the country. And Dr. Jude Onwewi of Neimeth Pharmaceutical Plc., advocated for the inclusion of pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in the Vvrtual hospital for complete health care delivery.
Autor: Godfrey Ikhemuemhe
Quelle: Vanguard, 09.11.2005
