– Expansion to continue

FOLLOWING the initial rollout of the telemedicine programme in rural communities over the last six months, Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony, has declared the pilot a success and announced plans to expand and improve it.

The Minister made this disclosure on the sidelines of an event on Tuesday where he revealed that there are telemedicine sites currently in four regions.

The pilot began in Region Nine at four centres and the minister noted that community health workers will be trained to use the devices.

“While we are able to do that the big challenge was connectivity, so in each of these sites we have put in satellite connectivity,” he said.

Added to this, he noted that since the implementation of telemedicine, quite a number of persons’ lives were saved as they had severe conditions and were able to be medically evacuated for critical care that they needed.

Currently, he added, that since the expansion, there are four sites in Region One, four sites in Region Seven, four sites in Region Eight and another four sites in Region Nine.

Giving an explanation of how the system works, he said that it would basically be a computer which has a number of devices that includes probes that would allow doctors miles away to conduct an ultrasound of a patient’s abdomen among other things.

“So, let’s say at Gunns where we have one site that’s probably about 500 miles away from Georgetown — the community health worker in Gunns can use that probe, put it on somebody’s abdomen in Gunns and the doctor at Georgetown hospital would be able to see what is going on in that person’s abdomen or similarly, they can put up the electrodes on the chest and doctors would be able to see the ECG at Georgetown hospital and that helps with the diagnosis,” he added.

Against this backdrop, with the addition of satellite connectivity, the programme, he said, has so far worked really successfully.