AS IT ALMOST always happens, most barangay health centers do not have doctors and if they do, they do not have medical equipment and if they do, they do not have medicines.
Although this might seem as simple as mixing coffee, cream and sugar into a hot drink, it really is not, because doctors, equipment and medicines rarely do ever converge at the barangay level.
Thanks to Information and Communications Technology (ICT), it is now possible to virtually talk to a doctor remotely, and that means from anywhere there is a telephone or internet connection as the case may be. Using this technology, there is now a solution to the problem of not having enough doctors to man all of the 42,000 or so barangays nationwide.
One approach is to have a doctor based in a central barangay but have him service nearby barangays remotely. The other approach is to have a central facility at the municipal level that would service all barangays that could be reached by a signal.
It should be made clear, however, that telemedicine should only be an alternative or a supplement whenever there is no doctor that could be assigned, or if there is no doctor that could maintain a regular daily schedule.
Given the present state of mobile technology, anyone who has a smartphone can take pictures or videos of any medical patient and send these to a doctor somewhere, anywhere for that matter. This technology has become so ordinary because anyone could now use Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and many other options to do this.
Basically, telemedicine could happen if two or more medical workers could communicate with each other at the very least using a telephone or radio, but at best using a video call.
Of course, any patient could also talk directly to a doctor, but for good measure, it is always better for a medical worker to assist the patient. A call between two doctors would be best, but at least, it could be a nurse or a nursing assistant, even a midwife or a medic.
Historically, it has been proven that there has always been a lag time in the implementation or adoption of foreign technologies in the Philippines. While it is widely known that individual Filipino users have already gotten used to video messaging on a day-to-day basis, telemedicine via video messaging has not been adopted for public health.
As it is now, there is no more excuse not to do it, except for the usual lack of people and the absence of connectivity. In the interest of public health, let us just set aside those excuses and start with what we have.
I have heard before that some doctors are not keen on telemedicine because they do not know how to make money from it. May God bless their spirits and make them realize that one way or the other, there will be financial rewards for them but in the meantime, they should just be truthful to the oath that they swore./PN
