Information and Communications Technology In Healthcare

Information and Communications Technology In Healthcare

Information and communications technology (ICT) has the potential to improve access to, and the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care in Bangladesh. This is particularly true now that wireless networks are penetrating every corner of the country, and handset penetration has skyrocketed. We can now envision a time when every person and health provider in Bangladesh can have access to the health information they need, when they need it, in the form that is most usuable, and in the most convenient place to provide the needed care.

There is no guarantee that this will happen, however. Most developed nations are mired in large numbers of different legacy health information technology (HIT) systems that are not interoperable; these make progress with new technologies very hard. Despite billions of dollars, pounds, and euros spent, the vision is not being achieved.

Bangladesh has the opportunity to learn from and avoid those mistakes. It can become a model for the use of ICT for health. We can overcome the barriers to ICT in Healthcare. These include the cost and complexity of implementation, which often necessitate significant work process and cultural changes. Given ICT’s potential for all the affected sectors, private and public, the selection of ‘ICT In Healthcare’ as the upcoming 2012 Colloquium topic for The Daily Star Leadership Colloquium is timely.

The Bangladesh Government has accelerated the deployment of health IT systems as part of its innovative “Digital Bangladesh” project. It forsees an ICT based society where information will be accessible on-line and where all appropriate existing tasks of the government and other non-government or semi-government and healthcare will be enabled and/or performed using digital technology.

The purpose of this colloquium “ICT In Healthcare” is to afford a tool for all affected parties in Bangladesh to better understand the possibilities and challenges in the field, and to identify paths forward and opportunities for collaboration. This will include exploring the use of modern communications technology, such as video conferencing, to bring appropriate knowledge to the most remote situation. The latest thinking in HIT, telemedicine/telehealth services, mobile health will be explored.

Health Information Technology Initiatives:

Significant progress has been made by the global informatics communities in developing a systematic approach to health IT. Achievements such as machine-level communications infrastructures have laid the groundwork for the creation of electronic records and clinical decision support systems. Major progress has also been made in designing ICT-enabled health systems for resource-challenged countries like ours. However, they have yet to be applied at any significant level.

How to accelerate the development and adoption of Health ICT in key areas:

Consumer Empowerment – How can each citizen, from birth, have a secure, up to date, personal electronic health record (EHR) that they can access anywhere they are, and share with their health providers – wherever they are? EHRs should include basic vital registration data, complaints, laboratory results, procedures, discharges, transfers, referrals and interpretations that is standardised widely available and secure.

Remotely enabling the public and providers with health information — How can the public and less trained health providers access higher levels of expertise without having to take a bus to Dhaka?

Chronic Care – How can we use new remote diagnostic and monitoring devices, messaging, and ICT-organized supervision (including video consults between patients and remote doctors) to treat the coming tidal wave of chronically ill patients but keep them out of hospitals?

Bio-surveillance – How can we enable the transfer of standardised and anonymous health data from the point

of health care delivery to authorised private and public health agencies within 24 hours of its collection?

Medical Malpractice – Safeguarding practices, patients and reputations. How are forward thinking medical professionals advancing their practices in quality and profitability with the use of modern ICT?

The Latest in Video Conferencing – What are the latest in capabilities, costs and uses in the field, from training to patient consultation?

The costs and benefits — What will such systems cost and how will they be paid for? What are the benefits to the leading participants an ICT-enabled health “eco-system”: citizens, government, health providers, service NGOs, pharmaceuticals, wireless companies, IT companies, others?

Comparing Bangladesh with the rest of South Asia, with the world – What are other developing countries in our region and the world doing? What are the successes to copy and the mistakes to avoid?

The colloquium will bring together experts and leaders from each of the affected parts of Bangladesh society, along with a group of international thought leaders in these matters for a day of discussion, debate and networking.

The following sticks out. Health people will find it strange that one of the technologies is being singled out in the general program this way. I think that will harm you in trying to promote video conferencing. Instead, I suggest you prepare a separate one page fact sheet that has a lot of this content.

High Quality Video Conferencing Enables HealthCare to Expand Reach:

In recent time Telemedicine/Telehealth just took a giant leap forward. Mobile healthcare solutions brings through a combined usage of high definition video conferencing system and sets of special Tele-medical peripherals, equipments and software, medical information is transferred via interactive audio-visual media for the purpose of consulting, remote medical procedures or examinations to Healthcare professionals and patients, medical diagnosis and patient care when the medical specialist and patient are separated by distance. It essentially eliminates distance as a barrier in health care delivery.

Some of the services that Telemedicine/TeleHealth enable or facilitate are:

Continuing Medical Education - For health professionals and special medication education seminars for individuals and groups in remote locations.

Call Centre - Nursing call centres for referrals and patient services.

Patient consultations - Audio, video, and data are shared between a patient and physician for the purpose of rendering a diagnosis and subsequent treatment plan.

Remote patient monitoring uses - Special devices to remotely collect and send data to a monitoring station for interpretation. This could include checking vital signs, such as blood glucose or heart ECG. This is usually accomplished with specialty hardware devices and with integrated/fixed communications capabilities.

Specialist referral services - usually involve a specialist assisting a general practitioner in rendering a diagnosis. Videoconferencing enables the patient to see a specialist during a remote consultation accomplished in real-time, or the transmission of images, such as x-rays, along with patient data for later viewing. This is especially important for patients living in rural areas, or who are too ill to travel great distances to visit a specialist or clinic.

Disease management – It is a relatively new telemedicine application. It refers to the on-going consultations between a patient and two or more multi-disciplinary practitioners whose intent is the treatment and management of long-term disease. This often involves interaction between medical, pharmaceutical and behavioural professionals on a single case. With the increasing aged population and subsequent increase in certain diseases such as type II diabetes, HIV, Malaria, Tuberculosis etc, the disease management umbrella is expanding.

Support services - In campus facilities and remote offices. Healthcare is often rendered in a distributed office environment, and almost every process falls under privacy and other regulatory requirements. As such, nursing and support services are often the first to adopt secure telemedicine and communications-related technologies in order to reduce inter-office delays, improve the patient experience, and to reduce operational costs.