An internet-based telemedicine system in Nigeria

Telemedicine is a very exciting field worldwide. Nigeria has a population of more than 120 million people, a major percentage of which live in the remote rural areas, whereas with the best-equipped hospitals and scarce medical experts are distributed in the urban cities. These people living in remote rural and poorer areas have limited access to basic healthcare. Geographic isolation, the scarcity of physicians and hospitals, and difficulties of travel to larger cities where such care is available are among the factors limiting this access. Governments at federal, state and local levels, have been making healthcare in these remote rural areas their focal point over the years so as to enable citizens in both rural and urban areas to have equal access to medical services and clinical healthcare despite the geographic isolation barriers but this effort has only been partly successful. Therefore, establishment of an Internet-based telemedicine system would be most useful in achieving government's aims of bringing useful healthcare to these remote rural and poorer areas. This among other things would improve the quality of healthcare in rural and outlying areas, lower costs of delivering healthcare and give remotely placed physicians the opportunity to consult over any patient's case. In this paper, an Internet-based telemedicine environment is developed for Nigeria, specifically to support consultations among remotely placed patients, rural health workers and specialists in the urban cities and provide a secure access to remote patient records. The paper further discusses some of the challenges and implementation issues of telemedicine in Nigeria. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.