Telemédico








Telemedicine for Honduras


Summary

Telemédico is an communication platform designed to provide free medical diagnosis and healthcare services at a distance, for all Hondurans, especially children.
 


Full Description

Telemedicine is defined as
the use of telecommunication and information technologies in order to provide clinical health care at a distance. It helps eliminate distance barriers and can improve access to medical services that would often not be consistently available in distant rural communities. It is also used to save lives in critical care and emergency situations.

In underdeveloped countries, like Honduras, where disease is prevalent, doctors are scarce, and health care infrastructure is inadequate, telemedicine is an innovative solution that connects the most impoverished people with the people with access to resources that may help them access at least an adequate level of healthcare.

Telemedicine can employ a multitude of modern technologies, transmitting information via SMS, chat, mobile, photo, audio and video to a range of medical specialists, including doctors and nurses.

With a simple Internet connection, patients can videoconference with a health care professional half-way around the world or email MRI scans for medical analysis. More remarkably, without any face-to-face interaction, doctors can distantly monitor the blood pressure or glucose levels of a clinic’s patients through a computer screen.
For regions without adequate healthcare infrastructure, the possibilities of telemedicine are tremendous, as it enables effective medical care despite understaffed clinics and undertrained practitioners. Basic telemedicine initiatives can be established with low start-up costs, which is what Telemédico intends to do.

By using common, widely used communication technologies such as mobile and internet, Telemédico offers a communication avenue between a volunteer battalion of healthcare professionals and the most impoverished segment of the Honduran population, whom are in dire need of medical services at long distances, or in places of difficult access such as inner city underdeveloped areas, where traditional public services are difficult to access due to lack of investment and crime perils.

Even in developed countries such as the United States and United Kingdom the tools of Telemedicine have dramatically cut cost of access to healthcare services, improving rates in almost unbelievable ways:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2500026/healthcare-it/telehealth-can-reduce-deaths-by-45---study-shows.html

The impact of Telemedicine may be clearly seen in the fact the even the United Nations, through its UNESCO agency, sports a 'Telemedicine Chair' program:

http://www.unesco.org/en/university-twinning-and-networking/access-by-region/europe-and-north-america/spain/unesco-chair-in-telemedicine-467/

Telemédico is a magnificent healthcare solution with top notch impact upon medical emergencies, especially the ones generated by crime-related trauma such as gunshot and knife wounds, where even basic knowledge of emergency treatment in a matter of minutes may make a massive difference. Obviously, Telemédico is also a powerful solution for preventive, family medicine, as well as a tool for sex education for teenagers. All in all, however, our teams´s main motivation is to make Telemédico a tool with the greatest impact upon the most exposed and important segment of the population: our beautiful children. Our team sees a great potential for wholesome impact upon child healthcare services, where our communication platform can provide not only access to critical information, but also to critical services for children in rural or inner city geographical areas.

Telemédico works by providing an online website where the user chooses to connect through Skype, mobile, or chat connections to the healthcare professionals volunteering time, knowledge and resources. They do so, however, through an intermediate back office, where the operator receives the information and immediately connects with the professionals scheduled at the moment to acquire the solutions needed by the user (much in the way the 911 service works in the U.S.).

This ensures maximum efficiency in the flow of information, including collection and feedback, as well as ensuring the availability of sources, since there will always be redundancy in the number of professionals scheduled at any given moment.

Telemédico will also generate a public awareness campaign to show its availability also through simple mobile communication, where access to internet is not possible. There will also be an SMS service included in the platform.

Once the healthcare professional has been contacted, the operator will assess whether to remain as an intermediate, or to provoke the direct connection, either through mobile or Skype, between professional and user, according to conditions.

In this way Telemédico works by establishing 'Telemédico Stations´ throughout the country, which may be based at public schools, public health clinics, church missions, social centers, and other places of social relevance, where the service may be promptly accessed by users. All that will be needed is an mobile or cable generated internet connection and a laptop or PC for Skype or chat, wherever possible, and if not, at least a working mobile device to place a call to Telemédico center, where the operator will immediately call back, absorbing the cost of the call, which may be sponsored by telephone and mobile providers, as well as other corporate or government sponsors.

Telemédico will in this way remain a FREE healthcare provider for all Hondurans, especially children.

Most importantly, Telemédico is far-reaching, low-cost, technology driven solution capable of creating added Social Value to people and companies, awakening feelings of solidarity and compassion from all social segments of the population, especially  those who may want but do not know how to help in such an efficient and far reaching form. 

Resources ready to support Telemédico:

1. Medical College of Honduras.
2. Medical Workers Union of Honduras.
3. University Medical Faculties.
4. Small Business National Association.
5. Health Ministry.
6. International Medical Brigades.
7. International Cooperation Agencies.
8. Church Humanitarian Missions.
9. Municipalities.

This is why we see Telemédico as a win-win project, where those who volunteer time and resources will win social, government and corporate prestige, and those who receive medical services will win greater access to healthcare, which is always conducive to social well being, the most important factor in the governance of a modern republic. 

Our team:

Eldan Cruz, Political Science and Philosophy at King's College, Halifax, Canada.

Jacobo Cruz, Computer Systems Engineering at UNITEC, San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Our company's website:


A demo of our platform in construction may be seen at:

www.uploadplay.com/telemedico



Video Presentation

If your project has been nominated for global awards, please embed here your 3-minute Youtube presentation. (Select "Insert" --> "Youtube").
TEAM
CruzBros





MEMBERS

Eldan Cruz: eldan.cruz@texterlatam.com
Jacobo Cruz: jacobo.cruz@texterlatam.com





GITHUB

Please write down here the Github info for your team and project.





IBM BLUEMIX USE

If you used Bluemix, please provide the runtimes and APIs here.