In January 2011, I was fortunate enough to spend three weeks in Rwanda for the Innovation for Humanity project. As a Chinese native I thought I understand what emerging market means. However this trip proved me wrong not only I see more opportunities in Rwanda but also I identified areas from which China should learn.
The use of mobile technology to provide better healthcare is one of these areas. The benefits of mobile health comes in two layers - providing better quality healthcare and covering more patients in rural areas. From auditing the process of my client, a private clinic in Kigali, I learnt that all of its patients have cell phones. To better serve patients with chronic disease such as Malaria, doctors needed to keep track of the progress and conditions of these patients. One way, and the most common way, to do this is to require the patients to re-visit periodically. However every few patients do so because the time spent on traveling was too long and the cost of transportation was high. The doctors at this clinic envisioned using mobile phones as the mean to check the status of patients and deliver health care services. Upon finishing streamlining its operations, raising enough funds to cover the communication cost of using mobile technology might be a very attractive project for us next year.
Although private clinics were facing funding hurdles to realize telemedicine using mobile phones, the public healthcare system has already achieved this goal. A good example is the mHealth initiative, where communicate healthcare workers were provided with mobile phones. In Rwandan healthcare system, Community Healthcare Centers are the basic level that were supported by volunteers, called community healthcare workers. Their job is to visit rural area families to provide basic healthcare services and gather information. Enabled by these cell phones, community healthcare workers are now able to send text messages to Community Healthcare Centers or larger Referral Hospitals with the health conditions and healthcare needs of the patients. In this way needed health care services would be provided in an accurate and timely manner.
The case in Rwanda reminded us that telemedicine does not require sophisticated technology. Basic mobile technology could solve challenges faced by many developing countries.
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