Telemedicine: Modern technologies to reduce healthcare costs

Access, equity, quality and cost-effectiveness are key issues facing healthcare in both developed and less economically developed countries. 

Modern information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as computers, the Internet and cell phones are revolutionising how individuals communicate with each other, seek and exchange information, and enrich their lives. 

These technologies have a lot of potential to help with today’s global health issues. 

Telehealth has the potential to reduce healthcare costs, improve patient outreach and health outcomes, and change the way providers treat their patients.  

New devices and programmes are helping providers better their patients and respond to ongoing health crises, such as the coronavirus.  

As part of its Big Four policy objective, Kenya has so far adopted universal health care (UHC). 

It has the lofty objective of ensuring that every Kenyan has access to safe, effective and high-quality essential health care services, including inexpensive necessary medicines and vaccines for all, without putting them in poverty. 

The rationale for Universal Health Care is unmistakable, with the right to health being a fundamental human right guaranteed by the Constitution and a key component of Vision 2030. 

To achieve this ambitious goal, the government has spearheaded multiple important policy and administrative reforms and programmes aimed at improving access to healthcare. 

These include the Linda Mama Programme that provides financial cover for maternal health services to pregnant women, and Edu Afya, a comprehensive health cover scheme under the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) aimed at making healthcare accessible to students. 

With the proliferation of healthcare service providers, inventors, suppliers and designers, healthcare is one of the few frontiers that has been less accessible through the use of mobile phones and digital technology to date, but that has changed after the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020.  

The Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council (KMPDC) moved quickly to respond to the pandemic’s restrictions and ensure that patients continued to receive quality care from their healthcare providers despite the situation by beginning to issue approvals for various registered and licensed health institutions to provide virtual medical services, the private sector has not been left behind. 

By February 2021, about 20 health facilities had received approvals from KMPDC to offer telemedicine services in the country, and this number has subsequently grown. 

It is important to note that telemedicine or virtual medical services alone will not solve the challenges faced by the Kenyan health system today.  

They are not and should never be viewed as a magic bullet. Rather, they are one critical piece of a strong and functional health system. 

The Kenyan health system will always require physical clinics and hospitals. In many situations, patients will require or prefer face-to-face consultations and examinations. 

Most specialised and surgical services necessitate the patient and doctor to be physically proximate (although globally there are major technological advances in these spaces too). 

The latest innovation being a 5G connected ambulance that provides a new way to connect patients, ambulance workers, hospital equipment and remote medical experts in real time. 

The ambulance module takes care of the patient upon receiving them – it will pick up the patient from location, use sensors to check the patient’s condition, treat or send them to hospital using the app itself. 

Doctors are now able to perform an emergency surgical procedure remotely through an immersive combination of 5G-enabled technology. 

A smart camera in the ambulance transmits high-definition footage to the doctor with close to zero latency.  

Using a Virtual Reality headset and a joystick, the doctor can then remotely guide a paramedic through a series of procedures based on haptic glove technology and attend to the patient conclusively.  

The vehicle is linked to and shares live measurements of clinical data such as the patient’s heart rate as well as their medical records.  

Through a robotic glove, the paramedic’s gestures can be guided via vibrations triggered by the joystick. 

All these allow the doctor to recognise vital signs, access medical records remotely and ultimately respond much faster, compared to the traditional way of sending a cardiac arrest patient on a two-hour traffic-filled journey to hospital. 

For extremely complex emergency cases whose medicine is not available in the smart ambulance, smart drones are sent to pharmacy stores to fetch the required medicine in advance.