Peru link: Health professor helps find solutions for rural healthcare

Uwe Reischl M.D. explaines his plan to facilitate communication between physicians in rural areas of Peru.

MITCH ESPLIN/THE ARBITER - Uwe Reischl, M.D. displays his plan for implementing an internet based communication system for physicians in rural areas of Peru.

What started out as Uwe Reischl, a health sciences professor, giving directions to a lost visitor to Boise State a few years ago turned into partnership between Boise State and the University of Ica. The lost visitor, who asked  Reischl for directions to the Boise State Bookstore, turned out to be a professor from Peru at U of Ica. The two started to chat and met up for coffee the next day. Later during his sabbatical in Brazil, Reischl visited to Peru three times.

Reischl will be attending as a key speaker in the III Congreso Peruano De Educacion Medica, held in Lima, Peru. He will be demonstrating a plan to connect doctors and clinicians in rural areas of Peru to larger medical centers by using the internet.

Boise State has teamed up with the University of Ica (located in southern Peru) to integrate telemedical systems into clinics around the country. Theoretically, if a clinician has a problem and needs the advice of a larger medical institution, they need a way to contact that institution easily.

Most rural areas of Peru don’t have telephone lines and some don’t have electricity running 24 hours a day. This makes communication between clinics difficult for doctors.

Reischl is working with U of Ica to make communication easier.

“Every one knows how to use the internet,” Reischl said. “Most of the physicians, who are rather young and are out in the rural areas, are very computer-savvy, so why not use this tool?”

There wasn’t limited access to that tool in clinics, however.

No phone lines means no internet. A lot of clinics have cell phones, but they’re for emergency use only; it costs thousands of dollars to purchase and maintain a cellphone in isolated areas.

In Brazil, Reischl found that the country had a sophisticated telemedicine program. It was satellite-based, and more than 2000 remote clinics could be linked to major medical centers.

“They upload data, download it, they have real-time teleconferencing, they send medical data via satelite to the clinics for interpretation and so forth– Peru doesn’t have that,” said Reischl.

While visiting a rural town in Peru, Reischl and his colleagues from University of Ica saw that even though clinicians utilized desktop computers, many of them did not have telephones. No telephone, no internet. They discovered an unusual solution from a young delivery man that stopped by the clinic. Reischl asked him if he used a computer.

“Of course, everybody has a computer,” he answered.

“That’s great,” Reischl said. “Do you use the internet?”

The man looked at Reischl and his colleagues as if they were from Mars. When people need the internet in Brazil, they go to internet cafes.

The man told Reischl that internet cafes have a yellow strip over their front door. After driving around the town for a while, Reischl and his colleagues eventually found a yellow stripe marking the door of a decrepit and questionable house. After deciding to enter the run-down home, they were surprised to find that the place was outfitted with about 25 computers.

“Lots of young people were there, playing video games and using the internet,” Reischl said.

Suddenly the answer their problems became very clear. Proprietors of different internet cafes would pool their money together to purchase a line, bring Internet to even the most backward of towns. Using the internet was cheap and simple.

The plan then was to have all the clinicians stop by the internet cafe before work every day. They access their email and download whatever data that a larger medical center has and stick it on a thumbdrive, so they have the information to use at the clinic. Before they go home, they hit the internet café again and send their reports and data to the medical center.

He said the program was primitive, but it will be the foundation for a communication system.

His presentation at the III Congreso Peruano De Educacion Medica then, serves two purposes: to explain the system, and to meet with government officials afterward and earn their support.

“You have only one chance to make a good first impression,” said Reischl. “So it’s gotta be good.”

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Posted by Gabrielle Brandini on Sep 20 2010. Filed under News, Sub Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.