Anybody remember the cute little French word Enonchong used to describe a desirable criterion for doing ICT business in SSA -- “incontournable”? Telemedicine is a definite incontournable in the ICT4D world, even more so in SSA.

Here’s a condensed presentation by Peter Corr, of the University of Natal ZA, which gives a quick overview on telemedicine: history, goals, definitions, applications, hardware and software requirements, etc.

It is interesting to note that the earliest application of telemedicine was in radiography, back in the sixties – a ‘relatively’ simple transmittal of radiographs from one hospital to another. As simplistic as sending a facsimile today – big deal, eh?  Today, the Radiology applications alone of telemedicine have grown into CT/CAT, MR/MRI, Ultrasound/Medical Sonography, Nuclear medicine, Angiograms/Arteriography, etc. A brief overview of a typical modern Hospital Information system (HIS) – more or less hospital ERP / CRM systems, will facilitate a more complete picture of current systems and practices in telemedicine.

Reiterating the obvious; telemedicine can provide much-needed respite in SSA, a region characterized by a dearth of medical professionals, allied health skills and applications -- Doctors, HIS, etc.

At the very basic, telemedicine can be as simple as an online chat/ consultation between a patient and a qualified physician (for-profit or pro-bono). An inexpensive ICT bridge across the health access gap, facilitated by a very simple combination of pre-existing ICT tools – the Internet and chat application. A 3^rd party could also conduct the chat session on behalf of a computer-illiterate patient. People are running with these ideas in SSA of course, Bridges.org has a bunch of real life examples of such ground level initiatives.

At this dreamy zenith, I can’t resist the urge to mentally extrapolate the possibilities of telemedicine in SSA; online therapy (shrink sessions), online medical prescriptions, home healthcare service for seniors and ambulatory patients, it gets even better -- tele-operated physical exam, robo-doc consulting sessions, remote controlled major surgery! Is this sounding science fictionish enough yet?

And as these new vistas keep opening up in SSA telemedicine, we would hope the SSA governments will jump in with supportive initiatives (just like they have in telecom by encouraging infrastructure-sharing, market competition, deregulation, etc.), same way some US authorities are pitching in incentives to encourage telemedicine, for instance, the Medicaid telemedicine reimbursement program in Indiana. More details on incentives for telemedicine may be found in the American telemedicine association (ATA) website.  

And finally, my sole grievance with the current telemedicine evolvement; despite all the innate appeal, relative ease of deployment, and industry big names pushing several different telemedicine programs and projects (most of them featured in the ATA website), grass-roots telemedicine applications are hardly making a ripple in mass markets nor cutting a wrinkle in public awareness -- compared, for instance, to online sex delivery technologies/device markets (no links here, for obvious reasons). And what could this possibly be attributable to – low profitability? Industry/government regulations? Is telemedicine really incontournable?