Targeting Morbidity in Unreached Communities Using Portable Health Clinic System

This study looks at how an e-Health System can reduce morbidity (poor health) in unreached communities. The e-Health system combines affordable sensors and Body Area Networking technology with mobile health concepts and is called a Portable Health Clinic. The health clinic is portable because all the medical devices fit inside a briefcase and are carried to unreached communities by a healthcare assistants. Patient morbidity is diagnosed using software stratification algorithm and categorized according to triage color-coding scheme within the briefcase. Morbid patients are connected to remote doctor in a telemedicine call center using the mobile network coverage. Electronic Health Records (EHR) are used for the medical consultancy and e-Prescription is generated. The effectiveness of the portable health clinic system to target morbidity was tested on 8690 patients in rural and urban areas of Bangladesh during September 2012 to January 2013. There were two phases to the experiment: the first phase identified the intensity of morbidity and the second phase reexamined the morbid patients, two months later. The experiment results show a decrease in patients to identify as morbid among those who participated in telemedicine process. key words: Portable Health Clinic, e-Health, Electronic Health Records (EHR), Telemedicine, e-Prescription, Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS)