Enhancing Healthcare with Information Systems

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background

Information support systems are not only incorporated in the healthcare sector but also in other active industries in the economy. According to Miller et al. (2020), most of the emerging countries are severely suffering as a result of inappropriate health infrastructure as well as professional medical staff. Such a challenge puts a heavy burden on the decision makers who are supposed to think of the range of uses of the available healthcare resources. Both the governors as well as policy makers are expected to provide the most lasting solutions to the healthcare society. Miller et al. (2020) further noted that Algeria is one of the African countries that are heavily investing in a modern health scheme and health centers with robust decision support systems. Notably, Dorner et al. (2018) highlighted the fact that most of the health information systems play a range of support roles to many users in the light of generating information needed by decision makers in identifying problems and provide the appropriate decisions. Within the parameters of the health facility, data remains paramount and serves as administrative sources for providing guidance meant for solving problems in an organization.

Rationale

Most of the medical facilities in the world are coming into terms with the essence of having a database as well as a decision support information system. This is due to the importance of the platform in helping decision makers and policy makers in establishing the most informed system. Right decisions in healthcare sector means adopting the right strategies that would help the sector to grow. However, researchers are still left with questions as to whether the same case applies to the African healthcare sector.

Aim and Objectives

The aim of this research is to determine the impact of having a robust database and decision support system on shaping the healthcare sector in Africa. The supporting objectives that would be covered in the research process include:

To establish the available database and decision support system in the healthcare sector

To explore adoption of databases in decision making in African healthcare facilities

To determine the significant elements, changing factors and dynamics in adopting decision support systems

To explore the influence decision support databases have in shaping delivery of healthcare in Africa

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Databases and decision support systems are believed to provide the most critical platform that determines the course of healthcare delivery in the health sector. Mutale et al. (2013) regarded the Health information System and databases as among the six interrelated building blocks across the health system. In most instances, a properly functioning HIS or decision support system is likely to provide the most timely and reliable details on the health system performance, health status as well as the health determinants. Mutale et al. (2013) further insisted that HIS largely enables the decision makers in identifying the problems, progress, the needs as well as make the evidence based health decisions, develop programs and the necessary programs. Having a weak HIS might imply a challenge against achieving the Millennium Development Goals known to be health-related.

Sebaa et al. (2017) asserted that having a robust Multidimensional OLAP would eventually facilitate the most reliable medical data that would be beneficial to decision makers in taking note of the healthcare trends, outbreaks, intervention and the course of combating the social inequality and healthcare needs. The emergence of the data warehousing technology is deemed paramount in the allocation of the medical resources, which are known to help stakeholders in the African health sector to uniformly handle pandemics, diseases and other health problems. With observations made by Mutale et al. (2013), case studies conducted in Ghana took note of the fact that the country has the most uneven distribution of the facilities, which makes that the country may not have the necessary resources in handling healthcare problems. Perhaps, African is increasingly facing healthcare challenges due to the slow adoption of the necessary data warehousing technology. Again, the available technologies and databases in the African medical sector are not specific in terms of handling pandemics, outbreaks and infections.

This is the reason that makes Sebaa et al. (2017) to believe that the development of EPIDWARE architecture may be the first and most significant move towards bioinformatics as far as the hepatic transcriptomics data is put into consideration. For the long period of time, the Rwandan medical sector has been depending on the Electronic Health Records in established the most critical decisions in the light of epidemic issues. Based on these findings, it can be established that databases and the decision support systems are helping the healthcare sector in Africa to be strong and resilient in terms of handling healthcare challenges (Gimbel et al. 2017). This is due to the fact that policy makers can now stand chance of making more informed decisions compared to the times when such databases were missing. In addition, the growth of technology has increased the interconnectedness of the healthcare sectors across different economies. This implies that decision makers can easily consult.

Chapter 3: Methodology

Database and decision support systems form part of the backbone of the healthcare sectors across the African countries. This research aims at establishing how such systems would combat the dynamics and help in shaping the healthcare sector. For the findings to be established and analyzed, the research would find the meaningful use of the qualitative research method, which takes into account the descriptive approach of the scenarios across the African-based case studies. The adoption of the systematic review is believed to be better placed. In this case, the research would sample the latest materials that touch on the relevance of the databases and decision support systems while shaping the healthcare delivery. Most of the materials that would be sampled for this case would largely be journal articles and other scholarly materials deemed relevant to the research topic under consideration. Thematic analysis stands out as the most convenient tool that would link the findings to the conclusive part of the research process.

References

Dorner, S.C., Yun, B.J., Kwon, R.J., Habboushe, J. and Raja, A.S., 2018. Adoption of Clinical Decision Support Tools for Pulmonary Embolism. Physician Leadership Journal, 5(5), pp.68-72.

Gimbel, S., Mwanza, M., Nisingizwe, M.P., Michel, C. and Hirschhorn, L., 2017. Improving data quality across 3 sub-Saharan African countries using the consolidated framework for implementation research (CFIR): results from the African health initiative. BMC health services research, 17(3), p.828.

Miller, K.E., Singh, H., Arnold, R. and Klein, G., 2020. Clinical decision-making in complex healthcare delivery systems. In Clinical Engineering Handbook (pp. 858-864). Academic Press.

Mutale, W., Chintu, N., Amoroso, C., Awoonor-Williams, K., Phillips, J., Baynes, C., Michel, C., Taylor, A. and Sherr, K., 2013. Improving health information systems for decision making across five sub-Saharan African countries: implementation strategies from the African Health Initiative. BMC health services research, 13(S2), p.S9.

Sebaa, A., Nouicer, A., Tari, A., Tarik, R. and Abdellah, O., 2017. Decision support system for health care resources allocation. Electronic physician, 9(6), p.4661.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background

Increased cases of road accidents in Africa have raised the eyebrows from healthcare stakeholders who believe that technology can still be of use. According to the findings established by Chokotho et al. (2017), road traffic injuries account for almost an eight of the total causes of death across the world. The World Health Organization has also stated that was an increase of around 46% of similar cases since the 1990s. With the trend being unstoppable, WHO predicts that road accidents would likely account for a fifth of the causes of death by the year 2030 if no measures are put into consideration. African still records the highest number of deaths due to road accidents when compared to other countries or region of the world. Lukumay et al. (2019) believes that the solution to increased deaths due to road accidents lies with the emergency response systems supported with information systems. An ICT-Based Emergency Response Plan has highly been recommended as the most effective platform that would ensure a timely intervention into road accidents the moment they are reported to the response teams. However, the response system would need a restructuring process that has equally been considered by the Malawian government and the healthcare sector.

Rationale

Increased cases of road accidents in the African countries have prompted the stakeholders to start rethinking on how the e-health system, can be restructured for the purposes of addressing the rising safety needs. With most of the countries in Africa exhibiting underdeveloped infrastructures, it sounds disturbing when it comes to negotiation of the appropriate technology or information system to be used. Perhaps, a robust ICT-based ERP is said to facilitate the necessary chain of command needed in handling emergencies as well as disasters. At the same time, the necessary response system should provide a coordinated mechanism and management structure that would profile the risks and the alert system that would ignite the response system.

Aim and Objectives

The main aim of the research is to investigate how an ICT-based Emergency Response System would shape healthcare in Africa. This would be aligned to the following research objectives

To explore the need of having an ERP during and after a road accident

To determine how latest ERP systems respond to dynamics in road traffic emergencies in Africa

To analyze ICT-based ERP response mechanisms that can be put into use

To determine the impact of ICT-based ERP system in shaping the healthcare forums across African countries

Chapter 2: Literature Review

A number of studies have increasingly paid attention to the nature of the ERP systems countries are trying to develop in response to the increased cases of road accidents. According to the studies conducted by Abdellah et al. (2018), the Road Traffic Accidents have led to the loss of millions of lives. Based on the study, approximately 1.25 million persons are killed as a result of the RTAs on annual basis. Latest studies have, however, established the fact that patient survival within the emergency situation largely relies on the efficiency of the pre-hospital healthcare services. The outcome would largely depend on the communication between the pre-hospital staff and the paramedics. More findings established by Abdellah et al. (2018) take note of the fact that wireless technologies as well as the mobile services have the capacity of staging a better pre-hospital emergency healthcare characterized by an accelerated treatment. The emergence of the mobile health technology takes into consideration the application of the medical sensors, computing, mobile devices as well as portable devices in staging the pre-hospital healthcare services. Some of proposed application that would change the landscape of RTAs in Africa is the mobile-based pre-hospital emergency system, which is a platform that can easily facilitate communication between the paramedics and the emergency doctors. Omotosho et al. (2019) further argues that the mHealth platform would not only change the response time, preparedness of the doctors and alertness but it would boost professionalism, teamwork and multidisciplinary approach to critical health issues. The pre-hospital emergency system, therefore, allows the paramedics and the doctors to exchange images, texts and even videos before arriving at the hospital. Such information is important in allowing doctors to establish the earliest evaluation of the patient status and prompt the diagnosis. Another system that would boost the efficiency of ERP, with the help of ICT, is the mobile emergency care system. The latter takes advantage of the webRTC technology in sharing the real-time communication. This type of a system is quite easy to implement because it only requires either Mozilla browser or the Chrome to work effectively. This technology can still work alongside the mobile e-healthcare platform known for offering the most excellent patient monitoring services (Federoff et al. 2016). The architecture requires a module that would support a phone application linked to the Bio-sensors and the second module needs to be a database center attached to the ambulance centers and the healthcare centers. The Bio-signals would obviously decide on the status of the patient before the ambulance and the necessary healthcare systems are alerted based on the situation and the pre-analysis conducted by the paramedics. Such a process would lead accuracy and effective delivery of services within the healthcare systems in Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya and the rest of Africa.

Chapter 3: Methodology

The study of ERP and RTAs has caught the attention of a mixed study, where both quantitative and qualitative research tools are deemed necessary. The process would be made possible with the help of a systematic review that would not only focus on the case studies covered on RTAs and ERPs, but also the findings that tally with the requirements of the research. The review would consider significant characteristics of the materials to be selected for analysis. Some of the characteristics would include the authority, the publishing dates, relevance of the content and rankings, in case of journal articles. Content analysis is more suitable in establishing the most striking scenarios that would drive the research process to conclusion.

References

Abdellah, O.A., Aborokbah, M.M. and Elfaki, A.O., 2018. Improving Pre-hospital Care of Road Traffic Accident's Victims with Smartphone Technology. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM), 12(2), pp.130-141.

Chokotho, L., Mulwafu, W., Singini, I., Njalale, Y. and Jacobsen, K.H., 2017. Improving hospital-based trauma care for road traffic injuries in Malawi. World journal of emergency medicine, 8(2), p.85.

Federoff, H., Frieder, O. and Burger, E., Georgetown University, 2016. System and method of applying state of being to health care delivery. U.S. Patent 9,305,140.

Lukumay, G.G., Outwater, A.H., Mkoka, D.A., Ndile, M.L. and Saveman, B.I., 2019. Traffic police officers’ experience of post-crash care to road traffic injury victims: a qualitative study in Tanzania”. BMC emergency medicine, 19(1), pp.1-11.

Omotosho, A., Ayegba, P., Emuoyibofarhe, J. and Meinel, C., 2019. Current State of ICT in Healthcare Delivery in Developing Countries. nternational Journal of Online Engineering, 15(8), pp.91-107.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background

Disease and epidemic outbreak tracking system is almost the latest technology to be incorporated in the healthcare sector. Xie et al. (2013) asserted that real-time monitoring has been a significant component in the course of monitoring diseases and epidemics. For instance, the use of GIS mapping is said to have been playing a significant role in capturing the real-time data before developing the right picture linked to the most specific diseases. This would further help in tracking as well as combatting the diseases or the viral spread. According to Fatwanto (2011), most of the real-time monitoring systems around built around the advanced visualization capabilities, complex-event processing paradigms and predictive algorithms which have the capacity of tracking the users believed to be in proximity to the carrier. This helps in advanced intervention that would focus on isolating or quarantining the carrier for the further avoidance of the spread of the communicable diseases. Most of the systems would support traceability around the facility for the purposes of enabling the immediate action. Africa is said to be behind in terms of adopting the advanced technologies that would help in tracking.

Rationale

Most of the disease and outbreak tracking systems play the most fundamental role in reducing the fatality of a communicable disease. However, the case in Africa is slightly different due to a limited coverage of the necessary systems. Most of the scholars are increasingly focused on how the availability of the tracking system across the entire Africa would influence delivery of healthcare services.

Aim and Objectives

The aim of this research is to establish the impact disease and epidemic outbreak tracking systems would have on delivery of the healthcare services in Africa. The supporting objectives include

To explore the latest disease and epidemic outbreak tracking systems used in Africa

To examine the impact and the role of tracking systems

To observe the changing technological trends in terms of the tracking systems in the African healthcare sector

To determine the influence disease and epidemic outbreak monitoring systems would have on healthcare delivery in Africa

Chapter 2: Literature Review

A significant range of the case studies are said to have established the necessary tools and relevant technologies linked to tracking systems in healthcare. According to Alheeti et al. (2012), the concept of medical treatment, information society and the electronic healthcare services have undergone transitions and significant changes that may not be ignored by the healthcare sector. Tracking of healthcare and monitoring the diseases has become imminent in the IT era and the development of private E-healthcare. Gamboa et al. (2010) also supports the fact that the emergence of the wearable devices has ignited a revolution in the healthcare sector. Most of the automated wearable devices are considered as the most invaluable tools needed for the non-intrusive monitoring especially when it comes to the risk population groups. Dementia, arrhythmia and involuntary falls are some of the conditions that are highly monitored by the wearable sensors. Furthermore, Gamboa et al. (2010) noted that a necklace full of sensors would be useful in tracking the heart rates, the location of patients or the outbreak before igniting the automated alarms once an abnormality is detected. Most of the necklace sensors would wirelessly bridge communication to the available central monitoring station. A sampled monitoring device would carry with it the necessary localization module, tri-axial accelerometer and an electrocardi0ogram. Such a device would sense some of the abnormalities before sending a signal to care giver units. Most of the alert systems can however be manual. Further studies conducted by Stoto et al. (2017) noted that most of the emerging infections have increasingly disrupted the tenacity of the healthcare system. This has compelled the FDA to avail coordination of the outbreak CDC, which is a system that can still be extended to Africa for the purposes of tracking the spread of diseases. In this context, surveillance systems have been paraded and integrated into the early warning systems. The systems are known for availing the first link in terms of public health action and regulation and control of the infectious diseases (Stoto et al. 2017). Platforms that are technologically supported, such as Emerging Infection Program Network, have been useful in identifying the unusual clusters of the infections. This would go alongside determination of the demographic as well as geographic spread of the diseases while estimating the magnitude of the entire outbreak. Besides, the surveillance network has also been paramount in terms of establishing the significant factors that would have prompted the outbreak. The same attention would go to estimation of the intervention efforts before the infections causes harm to the populations. It is worth noting that population-based tracking systems would facilitate both the temporal and anecdotal reports that would determine the cause of designing the community-based programs which would be useful for long term reasons. Therefore, tracking systems are important and would be important to the African healthcare sector as the system aids development of the early preventive measures.

Chapter 3: Methodology

The research on tracking systems and how they influence or shape the healthcare sector in Africa attracts a methodological approach, which looks at necessary tools and techniques to be used. A qualitative research approach, in this context, would be more useful in tapping into the insights facilities have towards the tracking systems. A case study design would play the most fundamental role in focusing on specific case scenarios where the tracking systems are deemed relevant. Such case studies would narrow down to specific countries in Africa known to have used the tracking platforms while controlling the infections. Four case studies would be enough in extracting the necessary findings and establish comparisons that would be robust enough in extracting elements and factors that shape the healthcare sector. Content analysis stands out as a significant tool in extracting and defining the factors deemed critical and inevitable while establishing a tracking system. The same elements would be linked to the dynamics in the healthcare system and how tracking factors make attempts of coping up with changes.

References

Alheeti, K.M.A., Hamed, R.I. and Al-Ani, M.S., 2012. The Mechanism of Monitoring and Tracking of Healthcare Systems. Journal of university of Anbar for Pure science, 6(2), pp.90-94.

Gamboa, H., Silva, F. and Silva, H., 2010, March. Patient tracking system. In 2010 4th international conference on pervasive computing technologies for healthcare (pp. 1-2). IEEE.

Stoto, M.A., Nelson, C., Savoia, E., Ljungqvist, I. and Ciotti, M., 2017. A public health preparedness logic model: assessing preparedness for cross-border threats in the European region. Health security, 15(5), pp.473-482.

Xie, Y., Chen, Z., Cheng, Y., Zhang, K., Agrawal, A., Liao, W.K. and Choudhary, A., 2013, June. Detecting and tracking disease outbreaks by mining social media data. In Twenty- Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background

Health promotions as well as community mobilization have become more pertinent in the face of applicable information systems in the healthcare sector. According to Muzyamba et al. (2017), community mobilization finds its roots in developing the concept of health promotions. Perhaps, operationalization of the entire concept of community mobilization need to reflect on the common principles attached to the community empowerment, community competence, community participation, community operation, utilizing the indigenous resources and peer support among others. Based on the findings produced by Anugwom (2020), health promotion takes into account the entire process of empowering persons in terms of enhancing the overall health. Most of the approaches to conventional health promotion have an essential coverage of health education and systematic effort that encompasses the significant aspects of the general health. Based on the arguments raised by Anugwom (2020), the right channel for conveying the health education is essentially informed through information systems, Community Theater, mediation, lobbying and social mediation. The recent observations in terms of increased used of social media across most of the African countries has diverted the attention of researchers in considering how ICT informs on community mobilization.

Rationale

It is paramount that the community intended to receive the healthcare services need to be informed and to be made aware of the essence of the services to the society. However, with the incoming of the information systems, health promotion and community mobilization seems to have taken a significant dimension that would reach out to masses. Based on this, the research finds it necessary to explore how health promotion and community mobilization is informed through ICT, and how such a change would influence the delivery of healthcare services in Africa.

Aims and Objective

The aim of this research is to explore how the ICT-Based health promotion and community mobilization have influenced or enhanced healthcare delivery within the African communities. This is supported by the following objectives:

To determine how health promotion and community mobilization are informed through ICT

To explore platforms for eHealth promotion and community mobilization

To examine practices of eHealth Promotion and Community mobilization within African health sector

To analyze the influence health promotion and community mobilization have on the delivery of healthcare in Africa

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Olu et al. (2019) noted that the evolution of Digital Health has boosted the platform for health promotion and community mobilization. The DH has increasingly been at the center of the innovation as far as the sustainable development goals are put into consideration. Most of the DH initiatives are grounded on information and communication technology, which informs on the coordination and filling out the communication gaps in health promotion. The integration of digital technologies has seen the benefit of improved access to safer as well as quality healthcare services as far as health information is put into consideration. Sardi et al. (2017) further noticed that in most of the developing countries, especially in Africa, cases of premature deaths as well as preventable diseases are known for inflicting high toil. According to Sardi et al. (2017), the unequal access to the most primary health services are known for affecting the social groups, communities and regions at the same time. Amid the health promotion as well as community mobilization, it is worth noting that ICT is applied in describing a variety of the platforms of collecting, storing, processing, analyzing, retrieving and transmission of information. At the same time, most of the adverse events as well as preventable errors are known for attracting patient harm across the commonplaces in the healthcare sector. Other findings established by Schiavo (2016) denoted that the emergence of eHealth informs on self-care education, as well as promotes the interactive websites that would enhance awareness and self-monitoring. The emergence of M-Health and eHealth has harnessed the provider-patient configuration in the course of extending and transforming the health paradigm in the underserved areas. The technological arrangement has provided a seamless access to the necessary facilities by taking the advantageous use of internet, and mobile technologies in campaigns and platforms used in disseminating information to masses. Jama Mahmud (2013) also took note of the eHealth literacy amid community mobilization and health promotion. Based on this, the society is alerted on how knowledge can be used in solving the most pertinent health issues. EHealth is a paramount skill that converge masses in the interactive websites where professionals would easily disseminate significant information. Notably, some of the vaccination campaigns are believed to have made use of the social networking sites and social media platforms in informing and spreading awareness to communities living in the African content. Some of the platforms include Facebook page and twitter, which are platforms that can reach out to millions of people across Africa.

Chapter 3: Methodology

The coverage of health promotion as well as community mobilization amid healthcare delivery requires a collection of methods that would address the research objectives. In this context, the research focuses on the qualitative findings in driving towards the impact of ICT-based health promotion. Carrying out the qualitative research process is advantageous, in terms of taking the shortest period of time and the capacity of integrating a variety of sources before attracting a robust conclusion. Alongside the qualitative research process, the research would take advantage of the cause-and-effect design, which attracts a systematic literature review. The latter would be used as a convenient tool in collecting necessary data linked to the research topic under consideration. The systematic review covers an entire process of tapping significant materials from online databases such as MEDLINE and Google Scholar before extracting the necessary findings. The review would be based on sampling criteria that takes into account the language used, the publishing dates, and the nature of content, relevance and authority of the material. A further use of the thematic analysis would be meaningful in extracting significant patterns of the findings or themes linked to the research topic.

References

Anugwom, E.E., 2020. Health Promotion and Its Challenges to Public Health Delivery System in Africa. In Public Health in Developing Countries-Challenges and Opportunities. IntechOpen.

Jama Mahmud, A., 2013. Designing ICT-supported health promoting communication in primary health care (Doctoral dissertation, Blekinge Institute of Technology).

Olu, O.O., Muneene, D., Bataringaya, J.E., Nahimana, M.R., Ba, H., Turgeon, Y., Karamagi, H.C. and Dovlo, D., 2019. How can digital health contribute to sustainable attainment of universal health coverage in Africa? A Perspective. Frontiers in Public Health, 7, p.341.

Sardi, L., Idri, A. and Fernández-Alemán, J.L., 2017. A systematic review of gamification in e- Health. Journal of biomedical informatics, 71, pp.31-48.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background

Remote patient monitoring is among the profound technologies that are shaping the healthcare delivery in Africa. According to Vegesna et al. (2017), remote patient monitoring, denoted as RPM, attracts the use of digital technologies in collecting medical and significant forms of health data from persons found in a given location. The same data is transmitted electronically to the healthcare providers for the purposes of conducting assessments before producing the necessary recommendation. The IT services behind remote patient monitoring are said to enable the provider in tracking the necessary healthcare data linked to the patience. The RPM, according to Fazio et al. (2015), plays the most fundamental role in reducing the transmission rates. Most of the monitoring programs have the capacity of collecting a significant range of the health data especially from the position of care as attached to the blood sugar, blood pressure, electrocardiograms, blood oxygen levels and weight among other signs. It is worth noting most of the data from RPM is essentially transmitted to the healthcare professionals across the facilities that are not limited to the monitoring centers.

Rationale

Most of the monitoring programs are known for helping persons to attain better health status in the society. This means that the disabled individuals would live longer and even avoid the nursing facilities. The same goes to the RPMs which are believed to bring down or attract a reduction in the readmissions or the number of hospitalizations. Such efforts have been linked to better quality of life in the society as far as long term conditions, among other complications, are put into consideration. Therefore, it is important to focus on how this case is applicable in Africa.

Aims and Objectives

The aim of this study is to examine the influence of RPM in enhancing the delivery of healthcare in Africa. This position can be explored with the help of the following objectives.

To establish the use of RPM in healthcare

To determine how RPM is integrated in healthcare services

To explore the applicability of RPM in the infrastructural healthcare in Africa

To determine the impact of RPM on healthcare services in Africa

Chapter 2: Literature Review

The study of RPM has attracted a chain of studies that have established methodological and theoretical findings deemed relevant to the research topic covered in the context. Kamsu-Foguem and Foguem (2014) focused on the findings on the African Home-based Care, which is known for providing the self-sustainable healthcare across the rural region. Most of the rural communities in Africa have essentially benefited from the ATMs and AHCs which have been cited as the significant sources of medical care. Based on the findings by Kamsu-Foguem and Foguem (2014), it is evident that RPM practices are realized through telemedicine, which is regarded as a sub-set of the entire e-health electronic processes. The findings covered telemedicine in four significant ICT technologies. The first technology is teleconsultation, which highlights the necessary procedures observed by the medical professionals while doing remote consultations before hitting the right interpretation of data. This means necessary explanations, as well as rationale for the recommended diagnosis and management should be based on the risk factor control. Most of the teleconsultation services are commonly promoted for the purposes of reducing the health problem. The second technology, as proposed by Goodridge and Marciniuk (2016), takes note of Teleexpertise, sometimes referred to as the Medical Second Opinion Service. Under this technology, medical professionals are allowed in seeking opinions remotely from other professionals said to have the necessary training or the appropriate skills. The platform plays a focal role in seeking the second opinion before prompting the necessary diagnosis and treatment enhancement. The third technology is telemonitoring, which is platform that allows the medical professionals in supervising as well as monitoring the patients remotely. In this case, medical data is automatically obtained for a predefined period before prompting the follow-up. The final technology is teleassistance, which is a paramount procedure said to support the medical professional in assisting other healthcare professionals amid a medical act. The teleassistance plays a focal role amid typical situations that may involve robotic telesurgery. The second typical situation revolves around remote ultrasound examination in which a physician would remotely direct a local ultrasonographer. Wootton et al. (2017) further focused on telehealthcare, which is the paramount backbone of the patient-centered care known to be facilitated through the communication across the patients, providers and care givers and the management. The necessary feedback is necessary in enhancing the medication management as far as adherence to medications and health literacy are put into consideration. Common technologies that are applicable in telehealthcare include the wireless communication, the internet, streaming media, videoconferencing, imaging and terrestrial communication among others. All these technologies are significant in capturing and storage of observations, images and videos among other items deemed relevant in RPM. It is worth noting that all these technologies have found a significant space in Africa with still a huge gap to be covered in most of the remote or rural areas.

Chapter 3: Methodology

The research finds it necessary to establish a collection of the significant methods deemed relevant in extracting the necessary findings that reflect on the research topic. In this context, such a collection of methods is critical in defining the platform that would produce the most justifiable conclusions. A qualitative research is believed to be suitable in covering case studies in Africa, especially in regions where RPM is said to be in use. The qualitative study takes the explorative approach in sampling the informative or detailed case studies that would be sufficient enough in generating the appropriate or the necessary findings that would be subjected to the analytical framework. The case study approach is advantageous, amid a qualitative research method, in the sense that it seeks to share the finest details linked to a case scenario or an incident that would directly or indirectly influence the research process. Sampled case studies would be picked from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa.

References

Fazio, M., Celesti, A., Marquez, F.G., Glikson, A. and Villari, M., 2015, July. Exploiting the FIWARE cloud platform to develop a remote patient monitoring system. In 2015 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communication (ISCC) (pp. 264-270). IEEE.

Goodridge, D. and Marciniuk, D., 2016. Rural and remote care: overcoming the challenges of distance. Chronic respiratory disease, 13(2), pp.192-203.

Kamsu-Foguem, B. and Foguem, C., 2014. Telemedicine and mobile health with integrative medicine in developing countries. Health Policy and Technology, 3(4), pp.264-271.

Vegesna, A., Tran, M., Angelaccio, M. and Arcona, S., 2017. Remote patient monitoring via non-invasive digital technologies: a systematic review. Telemedicine and e-Health, 23(1), pp.3-17.