Telehealth and telemedicine is currently one of the significantly growing fields in healthcare industry. This is due to the fact that both fields have various advantages that can truly improve the levels of healthcare and medical services. Africa Telehealth 2010 conference, currently taking place in Cairo, Egypt, is aiming to discuss the adoption of tele-health, the benefits and the challenges affecting that adoption. The event was organized by Texas Telehealth Tech (TTT) and sponsored by leading telemedicine solutions provider, Polycom & FVC, Gross Remote Conferencing, and emerging Telemedicine company in the Middle East, Telemed Providers. The event extends from 23th – 25th of October with Health Imaging Hub contributing as the official media sponsor. In this report, we highlight the events and sessions that took place during the first day of the conference.
The first day of Africa Telehealth 2010 included a number of highly interesting sessions. After welcoming the attendees, the event started with a presentation from Dr. Sahar Saleem, Radiology Professor, Faculty of Medicine (Kasr El Aini), Cairo University. She spoke about telemedicine in Egypt, mentioning that the first radiology practice in the country, also the first in Middle East, took place in 1922. Dr. Saleem briefly spoke about radiology statistics in Egypt, such as number of MRI units in the country (160), and their ratio in relation to population (2 MRI units per million capita). She also added that PACS systems are currently used in Egypt but on a very limited scale. Dr. Saleem confirmed during her presentation that telemedicine represents a suitable solution against a number of obstacles hindering the improvement of healthcare services, such as lack of specialists and equipment in rural areas, over population and over-crowded cities such as Cairo and Alexandria, where patients need a lot of time to reach radiology centers. Dr. Saleem added that telemedicine can improve the level of radiologists in Egypt as a result to continuous discussions and consultations with their colleagues in Western countries such as US and Canada, adding that such discussions can be useful if they take place between radiologists in Arab countries. She concluded that the expansion in telemedicine adoption in Egypt will be highly cost-effective, not only for patients, as they will no longer need to travel for long distances to radiology centers, but also for hospitals and healthcare facilities.
Remote presentations during the 2010 Africa Telehealth Conference:
The following session was a keynote speech conducted by Dr. E. Lyle Gross, MD, FRCPC, Physical medicine and rehabilitation adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Gross spoke during his presentation about the beginning of telemedicine in the United Sates. He also confirmed that telehealth has been taking an increasing role throughout the last years; he explained that UNESCO Chair of Telemedicine was introduced in 1999 in order to extend the use of telemedicine in several developing countries, especially in Africa. Dr. Gross added that that telemedicine has been used in several countries such as US, France, Canada, UK, Pakistan, Sudan, Kenya and Burkina Faso. The presentation also included highlighting a number of challenges that hinder the expansion of telemedicine adoption; such as the technology barriers including the fact that various locations do not have broadband internet access. He also added that bureaucracy, natural crisis, along with cultural and lingual differences, all play a role in limiting the use of telemedicine in several countries. Dr. Gross concluded his session with his prospects and expectations for telemedicine. He said that an inter-disciplinary collaboration along with team working and enhanced communication will surely improve the adoption of telemedicine in the near future.
Professor Dr. Asif Zafar, Head of Department of Surgery, Project Director Telemedicine & e-Health Training Center Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, spoke during his presentation about the use of telemedicine and e-learning training center in Pakistan. He noted that the country has an experience in using telemedicine to provide healthcare services in a number of remote and rural areas. He discussed the role of telemedicine training center at Holy Family hospital in Rawalpindi, which succeeded in training 100 doctors and nurses in two weeks time. Professor Zafar also highlighted the role of telemedicine in Pakistan during natural disasters and how it helped in providing healthcare services in flooded regions. He noted that telemedicine adoption in the county will continue to increase following the collaboration with Pakistan and US, the involvement of both public and private sectors in the country, and the use of teleradiology service via mobile network service providers.
The following sessions included several speakers from Egypt; they started with a presentation conducted by Professor Manar El Tonsy, Radiology department, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, she spoke about teleparasitolgy and its uses especially in tropical medicine. She added that such service would reduce the cost and time needed for diagnosis and treatment of parasitic infestations. She showed an example of a Leshmainasis patient, who was referred to her from Iraq, he had very poor health condition due to improper diagnosis for two years. Dr. El Tonsy confirmed that if there was a system for tele-parasitolgy it would significantly help that patient, through online consultations and discussions between doctors in Iraq and Egypt, to reach an accurate diagnosis much earlier. The following session included Dr. Heba Yossef, Assistant Professor of forensic medicine and clinical toxicology, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, who spoke about an applied model program “E learning forum” that provided educational services for both under- and post-graduate students through the faculty’s website. She highlighted the benefits offered by the model and how it improved the skills of the students. Professor Yossef also noted a number of technical obstacles that faced their model including the lack of sufficient IT support.
The next session was conducted by Professor. Sahar Talaat, pathology professor, Faculty of Medicine (Kasr Al Aini), Cairo University. She spoke about the E-learning project which offered medical education to students at her faculty. Professor Talaat highlighted the objective and the benefits of the project, which included flexibly, active learning and interactivity between students and their professors. She added that the e-learning courses were developed in the faculty starting from 2006, and they now include 13 courses. The next speaker in Africa Telehealth 2010 first day was Professor. Essam Ayad, pathology professor, Faculty of Medicine (Kasr Al Aini), Cairo University, and the head of telepathology unit at the Italian Hospital in Cairo, Dr. Ayad spoke about the collaboration between the Italian Hospital in Cairo and CIVICO Hospital in Palermo, Italy, in developing telepathology project. He highlighted the steps of the project and the devices and equipment used during preparation. Dr. Ayad discussed the benefits of the telepathology project for both patients, as it saved their time and money, and for doctors, by providing medical consultations with Italian colleagues. Dr. Ayad concluded that the telepathology project has extended to involve other hospitals in UK, US, and Italy. Dr. Sahar Saleem conducted the next presentation, which was discussing teleradiology in Egypt. She highlighted the goals of teleradiology in the country and how it can be used to provide radiology services in remote areas and over-populated cites as well, in addition to the opportunity teleardiology offers to Egypt to be a link between Arabian, African countries and the Western ones. Dr. Saleem discussed medico-legal issues and medical liabilities involved in teleradiology. She noted that teleradiology services in Egypt are following ACR standards for interpretation and reporting.
Africa Telehealth 2010 continued with several very interesting web-conferences on its first day. The first one connected the attendees with Dr. Ryan Spaulding, from Telemedicine Center, School of Medicine, University of Kansas. Dr. Spaulding spoke on his presentation about telemedicine service in Kansas; he highlighted the benefits of the service in the State as it includes delivering healthcare to various remote and rural areas with limited access to medical services. Dr. Spaulding discussed the use of telemedicine to provide healthcare at schools and how digital equipment such as digital otoscope and digital stethoscope were used to transfer medical images through the internet to doctors for consultations and discussions for accurate diagnosis. Another benefit for telemedicine service in Kansas, discussed during the presentation, was providing healthcare to chronic patients at their homes, which significantly improved their quality of life, saved their time, and decreased costs on both the patients and healthcare facilities. The presentation also discussed several telemedicine projects involving collaboration between The University of Kansas and locations in Armenia, Nepal and Uganda. Dr. Spaulding concluded with mentioning a number of obstacles that are still hindering the adoption of telemedicine such as technical issues and limited access to broadband internet access in several counties, along with cultural and time differences between various countries.
The final section on the first day of Africa Telehealth conference 2010 included a live teleconference from Pakistan, where presentations from Dr. Shagufta Umer and Dr. Mohamed Afzal and colleagues from Rawalpindi College of Medicine took place. The presentations discussed the use of telemedicine at Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi to provide ENT and obstetric-gynecological services in remote regions in Pakistan. The presenters discussed the clinical benefits of using telemedicine and how it helped in reducing costs on both patients and healthcare settings.
It is worth mentioning the first day of Africa Telehealth Conference 2010 had very useful and interesting discussions between the attendees. One of the major points highlighted was the medico-legal aspects of telemedicine and its variations in different countries. Dr. Spaulding mentioned that the US law considers telemedicine consultations as a form of a doctor’s visit to a patient outside his clinic. Dr. Saleem commented that in certain countries, such as Egypt, the medico-legal aspects organizing telemedicine are still vague as the service itself has been recently introduced in the country. Mr. Zaheer, the CEO of Telemed Providers said that in developing countries of Middle East, where there is no clearly defined legal structure available for telemedicine, it can be utilized under the supervision of the local consultant. Africa Telehealth Conference 2010 will continue for two days aiming to offer its attendees with useful and interesting knowledge about the latest in the fields of telehealth and telemedicine.
Telemedicine, A Middle East perspective