TELEMEDICINE AS A MEANS TO EXPAND ACCESS TO HEALTH SERVICES IN LOW-INCOME COUNTRIES: THE EXAMPLE NIGERIA ABSTRACT Many countries are exploring and using telemedicine to improve their medical services for the sole purpose of achieving maximum adequate health to their citizens. Nigeria is gradually embracing telemedicine to be able to meet up to the medical needs of people. Though there are some limiting factors that need to be approached before it can be generally accepted in the country. Besides doctors, the country is facing a dearth of other health workers and medical facilities. The few that are available are unevenly distributed with most of them concentrated in the urban areas. Consequently, rural communities, where many Nigerians (Preprint)-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

TELEMEDICINE AS A MEANS TO EXPAND ACCESS TO HEALTH SERVICES IN LOW-INCOME COUNTRIES: THE EXAMPLE NIGERIA ABSTRACT Many countries are exploring and using telemedicine to improve their medical services for the sole purpose of achieving maximum adequate health to their citizens. Nigeria is gradually embracing telemedicine to be able to meet up to the medical needs of people. Though there are some limiting factors that need to be approached before it can be generally accepted in the country. Besides doctors, the country is facing a dearth of other health workers and medical facilities. The few that are available are unevenly distributed with most of them concentrated in the urban areas. Consequently, rural communities, where many Nigerians (Preprint)

Published:2022-06-16 Issue: Volume: Page:
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Author:

Oduwoga Taiwo Ramota^ORCID

Abstract

BACKGROUND

The healthcare delivery in Nigeria has experienced progressive deterioration as a result of weakened political will on the part of successive governments to effectively solve problems that have been troubling the medical system of the country for so many years. Medical services face alot of challenges and bottlenecks ranging from dearth of trained and qualified personnel, ill-equiped facilities up to low utilisation of modern technology in the delivery of health services. Telemedicine according to WHO, is the delivery of healthcare services by healthcare professionals, using information and communication technologies for the exchange of valid information for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease and injuries, all in the interest of advancing the health of individuals and their communities.

OBJECTIVE

The goal of this publication was to evaluate how telemedicine could help to expand access to health services in low-income countries using Nigeria has an example.

METHODS

Telemedicine may be as simple as two health professionals discussing a case over the phone, or as complex as using satellite technology and video conferencing equipment to conduct a real-time consultation between medical specialists in two different countries. 1) Store and forward; telemedicine involves acquiring medical data and then transmitting this data to a doctor or medical specialist at a convenient time for assessment offline 2) Remote monitoring; enables medical professionals to monitor a patient remotely using various technological devices 3) Interactive telemedicine services provide real-time interactions between patient and provider, to include phone conversations, online communication and home visits.

RESULTS

Telemedicine has been shown to reduce the cost of healthcare and increase efficiency through better management of chronic diseases, shared health professional staffing, reduced travel times, and fewer or shorter hospital stays.

CONCLUSIONS

Telemedicine is providing healthcare information and services remotely with the aid of modern technology. Infrastructural development and integration of telemedicine into the existing health service delivery system are some recommendations to improve the adoption of telemedicine in Nigeria.

Publisher

JMIR Publications Inc.

Reference18 articles.

1. Household out-of-pocket expenditure on health care

2. Care from the air

3. Wearable Healthcare

4. A weakness of many past studies on the differences illness makes on the family has been that family and illness were viewed as if they constitute an isolated dyad, unaffected by the responses of health care providers and the requirements of treatment. When considered, treatment was often seen as an aspect of the illness and not separated from it for purposes of practical analysis. Yet we know that variability of health provider response toward the "same" problem is the rule rather than the exception and that such variability creates widely different experiences for patients and their families. It seems, therefore, that along with the type of illness and "response style" of the family, we need always to include the response and involvement of health providers in order to appreciate the effects on the family of any illness. Some studies are beginning to integrate more fully the role of treatment in the total picture. Recent research on the effects of kidney transplantation and the search for kidney donors provides an illustration of the powerful reverberations as available medical procedure can set off in both nuclear and extended family systems (e.g., Kemph, Bermann, & Coppolillo (1969); Fellner & Marshall (1968, 1970); Simmons, Klein, & Thornton (1973). As the scope and scale of medical technology increases, we find ourselves being forced to examine the "fallout" just as we have in other areas of powerful technological specialization and growth. In the formal sense, the problem of pollution applies to the health care industry in the same way that it applies to agriculture. 3. Family-Health Services Provider Relations The study of the effects of treatment on the family leads naturally to a larger set of questions about all the imaginable ways that families and health care providers relate to one another. Here we are concerned about everything from the traditional house call to the logic and economics of health insurance policies, which by underwriting only individual members one by one, fail to cover families as biosocial units. One area of enduring interest is the "doctor-patient relationship" (e.g., Balint, 1957; Blum, 1960; Bloom, 1963). Family medicine has enlarged the focus to "doctor-family" and, perhaps more representatively, to "health care team-family" since it is becoming increasingly clear that what families need and want cannot be and need not be supplied entirely or exclusively by physicians. Serious efforts to develop family-centered health services create both challenges and threats to conventional health care providers and to the current predominant models of organizing health services. The potential for constructive change contained in the family approach may well be timely and

5. Prospects and challenges of telemedicine in Nigeria