Health service delivery in Nigeria is constrained by: brain drain, insufficient
infrastructure and technology, poor and inadequate medical facilities and paucity
of medical specialists in rural and remote regions - thus leading to a high rate of
“medical tourism”. With increasing mobile phone ownership in Nigeria, mobile
technology-based telemedicine has the potential to improve Nigeria’s healthcare
delivery with enabling infrastructural facilities. In this paper, a pilot study that uses
Nigeria’s communication satellite system for virtual Telemedicine connection
between health practitioners and underserved communities using the “one2one”
mobile telemedicine application is reported. This pilot study aimed to deploy
Nigeria’s communication satellite system to enable virtual telemedicine connection
between health practitioners and underserved communities using the “one2one”
mobile telemedicine app. Successful deployment of a 1.8m VSAT dish at the pilot
clinic and testing showed robust internet connectivity with a time delay of 250ms
per hop. Furthermore, the One2one app was successfully installed on health
practitioners’ tablets/phone and patients’ phone/tablets. Over 100 patients were
treated using the one2one app connected through the satellite internet. The
one2one app was highly rated by patients and healthcare providers in terms of
usability with the highest score being ease of use 87%. This study shows that
Nigeria’s communications satellite can be deployed to support mobile telemedicine
as part of the effort to increase access to doctors and specialists in medically
underserved areas of Nigeria.
History
File Version
Published version
Presentation Type
keynote
Event name
Principles for Responsible Management (PRME) Symposium
Event location
Winchester Business School, University of Winchester
Event type
Symposium
Event date
13th - 14th July
Department affiliated with
Engineering and Design Publications
Research groups affiliated with
Industrial Informatics and Signal Processing Research Group Publications