e-consultation for peripheral hospitals

A project initiated by the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) and implemented by the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) will connect a base hospital and a district hospital to make specialist consultancy service available to patients in rural areas thus reducing cost and worry.

In this first Vidu Suwa endeavour, the Marawila base hospital will be the specialist e-consultation centre while the Dankotuwa district hospital will act as e-care clinic.

The main focus of the project is to link the specialist in a General Hospital in a city with a patient in a peripheral setting via a doctor using easily acquirable and relatively inexpensive technology that is currently being used.

The project called Vidu Suwa will bring comfort to the rural patient, specialist doctor and the peripheral clinic.

It will be inaugurated by Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva at a function at the Galadari Hotel Colombo on June 22.

This simple concept is put into practice with a very little extension to the existing technology.

Senior Lecturer, UCSC Dr. Shiromi Arunatileka, said this concept will be inaugurated tomorrow connecting the Marawila base hospital to the Dankotuwa district hospital as a pilot project. It will be replicated to operate between any base hospital and a district hospital to bring this ICT-oriented ease, as well as cost and time reduction to patients seeking consultancy service.

The main beneficiary of 'Vidu Suwa' is the patient as his travel expenditure, difficulty of travelling and travel time will be reduced. Unnecessary secondary visits to tertiary centres and specialist clinics will be reduced.

The cost of transfer of patients from peripheral hospitals to tertiary centres also can be drastically reduced. This will facilitate the availability of ambulances for critical and emergency transfers between institutions.

The availability of patient health records electronically will help these hospitals to make pro-active decisions on resource allocations and patient care.

The Specialist makes himself available across a distance at many e-clinics within the shortest possible time frame. This has the added impact of specialised care reaching out to the periphery.