GHANA TO SCALE UP TELEMEDICINE

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Telemedicine, an initiative that uses information and communication technology, ICT to improve access and availability of healthcare services, reduce unnecessary transportation and improve the referral system in particularly rural communities, is to be scaled up to cover the whole country by next year.  

 The project is being undertaken by the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development, in cooperation with the Millennium Villages Project, the Ministries of Health and Communications, National Health Insurance Authority, Ghana Health Service, Ghana Medical Association and British Telecom. 

The scale up is due to the huge success of a pilot project undertaken in the Amansie West District of Ashanti. 

The National Telemedicine Programme Manager, Joseph Adomako disclosed this to GBC’s Garden City Radio in Kumasi. 

He said apart from the tele-consultation centre established at Manso Nkwanta, the Amansie West District capital, to serve the Ashanti Region, similar centres have been established at Bolgatanga to cater for the Upper East Region, Keta for the Volta Region and Apam for the Central Region. 

Mr. Adomako said two tele-consultation centres will be established in the Greater Accra and Eastern Regions within the first half of this year, with the remaining regions getting their centres set up within the second half of this year and early next year.

 He explained that there is increasing demand for point-of-care support for health workers, so as to minimize the number of unnecessary referrals to the district and regional hospitals, which are often overwhelmed by cases that could be treated from a distance using ICTs. 

Telemedicine is therefore an effort to strengthen human resources in rural communities to improve the quality of primary healthcare.

 Mr. Adomako further explained that under telemedicine, healthcare personnel are trained in the use of mobile technologies to perform health consultations from a distance. 

A monitoring system then evaluates the performance and the quality of the telemedicine services in a timely manner. 

He noted that the structured consultation ensures that the most important questions are answered for a rapid and accurate diagnosis, which ultimately helps decide whether or not a patient requires referral to the hospital.

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