Design of E-Health Systems for Rural and Urban Areas
DESIGN OF E-HEALTH SYSTEMS FOR RURAL AND URBAN AREAS
ABSTRACT
Telemedicine is the use of information technology to deliver medical services and information from one location to another. The evolution and growth of telemedicine is highly correlated with the developments in communication technology and IT software development. Health services was degraded not only in rural areas, but also, in the big cities because of the migration of doctors, especially, specialist doctors. There is a great shortage in the advance medical equipments so that there is a great need for telemedicine. This paper introduces two issues related to the telemedicine; the first issue is to introduce and discusses the possibilities of all available technologies that can be used to implement telemedicine facility. Three scenarios of different levels and requirements were analyzed to cover the possible cases (big city, small town and mobile unit in a rural area). The second issue is to introduce the design and implementation of E-Hospitals to facilitate the process of medical data exchange.
1. INTRODUCTION
Telemedicine is the practice of medicine in which the information between doctors, or the doctor and the patient, circulates over an interactive communication network in the form of audio, video, fixed images and/or data (typical Multimedia application). Telemedicine may be as simple as two health professionals discussing a case over the telephone, or as complex as using satellite technology and video-conferencing equipment to conduct a real-time consultation between medical specialists in two different countries.
Applications of telemedicine nowadays cover a growing number of medical specialties such as:
Teleconsultation
Teleconferencing
Teleradiology
Telepathology
Tele-education
Telemonitoring
Telesurgery
Rural areas lack sufficient experienced doctors; Telemedicine can eliminate the rural/urban health divide caused by the dichotomy that many of the
ABSTRACT
Telemedicine is the use of information technology to deliver medical services and information from one location to another. The evolution and growth of telemedicine is highly correlated with the developments in communication technology and IT software development. Health services was degraded not only in rural areas, but also, in the big cities because of the migration of doctors, especially, specialist doctors. There is a great shortage in the advance medical equipments so that there is a great need for telemedicine. This paper introduces two issues related to the telemedicine; the first issue is to introduce and discusses the possibilities of all available technologies that can be used to implement telemedicine facility. Three scenarios of different levels and requirements were analyzed to cover the possible cases (big city, small town and mobile unit in a rural area). The second issue is to introduce the design and implementation of E-Hospitals to facilitate the process of medical data exchange.
1. INTRODUCTION
Telemedicine is the practice of medicine in which the information between doctors, or the doctor and the patient, circulates over an interactive communication network in the form of audio, video, fixed images and/or data (typical Multimedia application). Telemedicine may be as simple as two health professionals discussing a case over the telephone, or as complex as using satellite technology and video-conferencing equipment to conduct a real-time consultation between medical specialists in two different countries.
Applications of telemedicine nowadays cover a growing number of medical specialties such as:
Teleconsultation
Teleconferencing
Teleradiology
Telepathology
Tele-education
Telemonitoring
Telesurgery
Rural areas lack sufficient experienced doctors; Telemedicine can eliminate the rural/urban health divide caused by the dichotomy that many of the