Teleheath access for remote communities in developing countries - feasibility study

世界上一半的人口无法获得基本医疗服务(世卫组织，2019年)，在撒哈拉以南非洲的偏远社区，即使是获得基本医疗服务，也需要步行数小时，甚至数天(《柳叶刀》，2020)。今年早些时候，STI4D能够创新和测试技术，使社区能够在坦桑尼亚使用简单的诊断技术和视频通话与他们的医疗顾问进行远程会诊。患者和医疗专业人员的反馈在健康、时间和财务影响方面都非常积极。我们现在希望在更多的国家建立国际研究和创新伙伴关系和网络，以展示这一解决方案的更广泛的可行性、接受度和影响，并能够为在坦桑尼亚以外的市场定制和测试该方法做准备。在这个项目中，我们的工作重点将集中在乌干达(东非的一个邻国，它与坦桑尼亚有许多文化和基础设施相似之处，将使我们能够展示该系统可以多么容易地适应类似的市场)和尼泊尔(一个亚洲国家，虽然它分担了许多社区偏远的挑战，但在许多其他方面与东非有很大的差异，因此将使我们看到我们的系统可以多么普遍地适用)。我们将致力于与当地利益相关者和潜在合作伙伴建立未来的研究和创新伙伴关系和网络，并与潜在最终用户开展社区参与和调查，以告知并支持后续的国内协作研发和系统测试过程。这将为我们提供必要的合作伙伴关系、成果和数据，使我们能够更成功和快速地将我们的创新方法商业化并扩大规模，以增加发展中国家农村地区的医疗保健服务。

Half the world's population cannot obtain essential health services (WHO, 2019), and to access even basic healthcare in remote communities of sub-Saharan Africa requires a walk of hours, even days (The Lancet, 2020). Earlier this year, STI4D was able to innovate and test technology to allow communities to hold remote consultations with their medical advisors using simple diagnostic technology and video calling in Tanzania. Feedback from patients and medical professionals was extremely positive in terms of both health, time and financial impacts.We now want to build international research and innovation partnerships and networks in additional countries to demonstrate the wider viability, acceptance and impact of this solution, as well as to be able to prepare for tailoring and testing the approach in markets other than Tanzania. This will not only give us an improved product/service, but also allow us to commercialise and scale our tele-health system more rapidly and effectively.In this project, our work will focus on Uganda (a neighbouring country in East Africa which shares many cultural and infrastructural similarities to Tanzania, and will allow us to demonstrate how easily the system can be adapted to similar markets) and in Nepal (a country in Asia which - while it shares many of the challenges of community remoteness - has a significant diversity to East Africa in many other aspects, and will therefore allow us to see how generally applicable our system can be). We will aim to build future research and innovation partnerships and networks with local stakeholders and potential partners, and carry out community engagement and surveys with potential end users, to inform and enable a subsequent process of in-country collaborative R&D and system testing.This will give us the necessary partnerships, outcomes and data to be able to more successfully and rapidly commercialise and scale our innovative approach to increase rural access to healthcare in the developing world.