Telemedicine in Ecuador: failure or a learning experience?

Abstract

As part of the five main areas of the National Agenda for Connectivity, telemedicine was considered one of the most important together with tele-education, e-government, e-commerce, and infrastructure. We started our road to telemedicine implementation, in March 2002, as part of a National project in Ecuador. The President of Ecuador at that time, Dr. Gustavo Noboa, had signed the official decree No.1781 August 29, 2001, to create the National Connectivity Commission. Our mission for the telemedicine project is to provide health prevention, diagnosis, support and education through the use of ICT, in rural or hard to reach areas. However, this telemedicine project faced with difficult situation, which we assumed was due to the financial crisis in Ecuador. We learned a lot of experiences during this difficult situation. We concluded that telemedicine project, which affect and benefit so many people, should not depend entirely on political and governmental actions, but should have its main support and sustainability from other organizations such as NGOs, private companies and/or institutions. Finally, the most important lesson learned is that we believe in telemedicine more than ever, as a helpful tool to reach people whose voices are not being heard as much us as in the main cities and that are in great need of health services, prevention, education, diagnosis and treatment without the need to traveling long distances and in a much shorter time, that could mean a matter of life or dead.