Prospective case review of a global e-health system for doctors in developing countries.
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2004-12-17
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The Swinfen Charitable Trust has managed email consultations for doctors in developing countries since 1999 The process was handled manually for the first three years and then subsequently using an automatic message handling system We conducted a prospective review of email consultations between referring doctors and consulting specialists during six months of automatic operation December 2003 to May 2004 During the study period 125 consultations took place These concerned a wide range of specialties e g orthopaedics 17 dermatology 16 obstetrics and gynaecology 11 radiology 10 Of these referrals 33 41 were for paediatric cases Consulting specialists who were based in five countries were volunteers Referring doctors were from 24 hospitals in 12 developing countries The median time from referral to definitive reply was 1 5 days interquartile range 0 6 4 9 There was an 85 response rate n 106 to a survey concerning the value of the consultation to the referring doctor All the referring doctors who responded made positive comments about the service and half said that it improved their management of the case The second opinion consultation system operated by the Swinfen Charitable Trust represents an example of a global e health system operated for altruistic rather than commercial reasons