Portable Health Clinic as a Telemedicine System with Appropriate Technologies for Unreached Communities

Abstract

Poor healthcare infrastructure is the main barrier for providing quality healthcare services to rural communities in developing countries. Thus, these populations remain unreached, and there is a need to establish a method for ensuring the provision of appropriate and adequate healthcare services to these individuals. The portable health clinic (PHC) system has been developed as an effective telemedicine system to meet this objective. A trained village health worker can use this simple system for collecting vital information of the patient, upload the data to the online server, and connect village patients with a remote doctor to enable the provision of online consultancy using video conferencing. Although the PHC was initially developed to ensure primary healthcare service with a focus on non-communicable diseases, a major cause of death, gradually, tele-pathology, tele-eye care, maternal and child health care, and COVID-19 care modules have been added to provide special treatment in these areas as per local needs. The modular PHC system will continue to grow with the addition of novel features that aim to address the local needs. The low-cost and easy operation of the PHC system make it ideal for ensuring global health coverage in communities where inadequate medical facilities and poor-quality healthcare resources remain major issues.