Cisco care-at-a distance HealthPresence clinic piloted as first step to deliver healthcare to Kenya’s disadvantaged communities.
Cisco, Deaf Aid and Safaricom formally piloted Cisco’s care-at-a distance technology to bring patients and physicians based in Def Aid’s Mobile Hearing Clinic, situated in Nairobi’s Kawangware slum, together with Dr Gathare a specialist at Menelik Hospital in Nairobi for consultations. This first implementation of Cisco’s HealthPresence solution in Kenya demonstrated how technology can transform the delivery of healthcare to underserved, remote, and rural areas. Bandwidth connectivity was provided by Safaricom, the leading provider of converged communication solutions in Kenya.
Deaf Aid’s Mobile Hearing Clinic is designed as an outreach tool for early identification of deaf and hard of hearing children, and prevention of avoidable hearing loss through medical intervention. They deliver Ontological services to the communities where they are, so that children with any form of hearing loss or any other ear disorder are identified and referred for appropriate intervention and rehabilitation.
The Cisco HealthPresence solution combines high-definition video, advanced audio, and network-transmitted medical data to create an environment similar to what people experience when they visit their local doctor or health specialist.
Helping healthcare providers
It can be configured to support multiple locations and to use network connectivity to match the appropriate expert with the health needs of the patient. Designed for use by a licensed healthcare professional, it can extend the reach of healthcare providers, increasing access to specialists and can be used to redirect unnecessary hospital visits to low cost clinics.
Cisco HealthPresence allows patients to interact through technology with doctors who may be hundreds of kilometers away, within a clinical setting. It creates a dynamic environment for patient care, delivers a true-to-life experience between the patient and the provider, and helps improve lives by making it easier to access care.
The Early Identification Program in Kenya was designed as a result of a research conducted by Deaf Aid seeking to identify the causes of poor performance among the deaf children.
Bob Collymore, CEO Safaricom said,“Technology will be a key enabler for economic reform in Kenya and our aim is to use it to both enhance operational efficiency of the Kenyan public healthcare system and improve the quality of the healthcare services provided to Kenya citizens. We are very pleased to be working with Cisco to enable our healthcare professionals to collaborate more easily, regardless of location and to improve both the timeliness and the quality of care delivered.”
