The Virtual Doctors
Brighton
United Kingdom
Contact person: Huw Jones
+44 (0) 1903203720
info@virtualdoctors.org
http://www.virtualdoctors.org/
https://www.facebook.com/TheVirtualDoctors/info/?tab=page_info
Topics
- Aid organization
- Educational policy/project
- Social policy/disabled persons
- Volunteers are welcome.
About us
the Virtual Doctors (VDrs) is a charity, founded 2009, which uses local mobile broadband networks in Africa to connect rural clinics with doctors around the world.
The Virtual Doctors provides sophisticated, state of the art, yet simple to use technology, that allows rural health workers in Africa to communicate with Doctors for diagnosis and treatment advice. The service uses the ever expanding local mobile broadband network for internet.
This empowers health workers in rural Africa by enabling them to send electronic patient files to volunteer doctors for diagnosis and treatment advice, helping to save lives.
The service has three key aims:
• to help reduce unnecessary mortality and morbidity by allowing rural health workers to treat more patients on-site,
• to reduce unnecessary referrals to distant and hard to reach hospitals and
• to improve the skills and knowledge of rural health workers.
How we work:
• When a patient with a complex or unusual condition presents, the Clinical Officer creates a patient file with examination notes and photos and uploads it to the cloud. Health workers and clinical officers on the ground use an app on a smartphone or tablet computer to take notes on a patient's symptoms and photographs.
• This information is sent to a volunteer doctor who helps with a diagnosis and recommends treatment.
• Cases are directed towards doctors with a relevant specialism, whether it is skin diseases or HIV and Aids-related problems.
• The doctor in the UK will have a list of the drugs and equipment kept in the health centre in Zambia and can suggest treatment or further tests based on what is practical and available.
The virtual doctors service is in use in 215 health facilities across 37 districts and 6 provinces in Zambia.
Huw Jones is the Founder of the Virtual Doctors.
For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.