ICT for Health
Some of the most promising and clearly demonstrated applications for ICT in development are in the improvement of health care delivery. Experience to date suggests there is a number of specific ways ICT can be applied to achieve better health outcomes.
The principle of ICT-facilitated collaboration extends to medical research also. Health workers in developing countries are accessing relevant medical training through ICT-enabled delivery mechanisms. Several new malaria Internet sites for health professionals include innovative 'teach and test' self-assessment modules.
In addition, centralized data repositories connected to ICT networks enable remote healthcare professionals to keep abreast of the rapidly evolving stock of medical knowledge. When applied to disease prevention and epidemic response efforts, ICT can provide considerable benefits and capabilities. ICT is being used in many developing countries and communities to facilitate remote consultation, diagnosis and treatment.
Public broadcast media such as radio and television have a long history of effectively facilitating the dissemination of public health messages and disease prevention techniques in developing countries. The Internet also can be utilized to improve disease prevention by enabling more effective monitoring and response mechanisms. A number of countries, such as Estonia and Costa Rica, have invested in ICT to improve the administrative efficiency of their public health systems and ICT can also be applied to improving the efficiency of medical facility administration through, for example, the streamlining of medical procurement or the creation of patient record databases.
Challenges
Although HealthNet has made a real contribution, important challenges remain. Implementations in Africa have not always delivered the hoped-for level of success due to a number of factors, including: a lack of reliable and affordable telecommunications and power infrastructure; the failure and high cost of local Internet service providers (ISPs); unfavorable regulatory, licensing and taxation regimes; insufficient grant sustainability; poor organizational design; and user dissatisfaction with low band-width and delayed response.