Experts demand implementation of e-health policy

EXPERTS at the recently concluded two-day 2009 conference on Telemedicine and eHealth under the aegis of Society for Telemedicine and eHealth in Nigeria (SFTeHIN), which held in Lagos, have demanded for the implementation of the national e-health policy in the country.

Participants at the conference made this call in a communiqué endorsed by the President, Society for Telemedicine and eHealth in Nigeria, Dr. Olajide Joseph Adebola, and made available to ITRealms Online.

They said that if decision makers in the Health sector implement eHealth within the framework of the national health policy, benefits of telemedicine and eHealth would become more visible in the lives of the people.

The experts outlined some of the benefits of e-Health to include the reduction in healthcare cost to individuals, families and communities; while increasing accessibility of hard–to-reach population to quality healthcare.

Also, they noted that the implementation of the ehealth policy to the letter, would drastically reverse “brain drain” in the sector, improve capacity building for the health workforce and enhance efficiency as well as utilization of scarce resources.

Participants equally recognized inherent opportunities for Telemedicine and eHealth in the country.

These they said consist of optimization of the existing mobile telephony like the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) with over 67 million subscriber-base, saying it would facilitate delivery of eHealth services.

They pointed out that numerous examples of the successful implementation of telemedicine and eHealth programmes have shown that it is a veritable option health care delivery in a place like Nigeria.

The on-going pilot projects on telemedicine in the country, the group said, would give a lead to the final take-off of telemedicine in the most populated nation on the African continent, stressing that government’s efforts at upgrading the power generation to 6000 Megawatts by December, 2009 is expected to boost ehealth.

Further, they outlined some of the challenges militating against Telemedicine and eHealth development in the country insisting that a few health centers in the public and private sectors have commenced implementation of some eHealth solutions in Nigeria, but there are challenges to its wider implementation.

Some of these challenges the group said, include lack of public funding, licensing provider, reimbursement, fear of malpractice, high bandwidth telecommunications cost, and inadequate power supply.

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