1. What cell phone infrastructure exists in East Africa? Which nations have poor or no cell service? Which have good cell service? How does "good" cell service in East Africa compare to cell service in the US?
When looking at cell phone infrastructures in East African countries, the list that can develope is rather long and complicated with mostly all infrastructures being closely related to, either directly or indirectly, to each other. Some of the infrastructures that exist are lack of cellphone towers, cell availability, and the problem of having structures which block cell phone service such as bridges, cities. Also, all of these problems fall under the difficulty of having equally spaced out cell phone services because in East Africa, the distance between one cell phone structure and another, is very large distance. Many East African countries as well as others have black spots, dead zones, and cell towers are so spread out that they do not pick up service in many locations. One African country that is well known for their cell phone coverage is Kenya. However, the United States is much more advanced when it comes down to cell phone coverage because in America there are multiple services connecting to towers all around the country which then provides for multiple 3G coverage.
2. How does telemedicine treatment work in theory? Find an example in the real world, and explain how the reality compares to the theory. Discuss whether current telemedicine is feasible in East Africa. Discuss the feasibility of future telemedicine practices in East Africa.
Basically, telemedicine treatment works through sending an image of an ailment to a remote clinic for analysis in real time. This means that people, that are sick or could possibly become sick and cannot leave their homes, would have the ability to send an image of their ailments to clinics that they cannot travel to so that the doctors may find out what is the matter with them faster than it would take for the sick person to travel to the clinic. Sensibly high quality close up digital pictures with 640x480 resolution are possible solutions to how one may send a picture of their ailment to a clinic without travel. The resolution above probably represents the best quality that could be sent today with high-quality CCD camera over an ethernet link to a remote site for evaluation.
One example of a real life situation is actually in Tanzania. "Wilson Mkama, Permanent Secretary in the Health and Social Welfare ministry, when he opened a three-day Cross Country Learning Event in Health in Dar es Salaam yesterday.Among the delegates to the function were health experts from Ghana, Mali, Uganda and Tanzania." (from africanews.com) Tanzania is currently undergoing paying for the expenses of the setup and equipment of a telemedicine treatment. This would allow the people of Tanzania to not spend as much on their trips to the nearest clinic or hospital and it would also allow Tanzania to get the most out of its few certified doctors in the country.
3. Discuss the feasibility of telemedicine for training purposes.
Telemedicine enable medical information to be shared from one place to another with the use of technology. This would allow a physician located far from a reference center to have the ability to consult his colleagues remotely in order to solve a case, the ability to follow a continuing education course over the Internet, or the ability to access medical information from digital libraries. Thus, the feasibility of telemedicine for training purposes is very high because with Telemedicine, only a little bit of training is needed to know how to send and receive information and the rest will come from the doctor's own personal knowledge about a particular medical case. The potential of these Telemedicine tools is very important in countries where there are little to no doctors and where distances between clinics, hospitals, cities, and homes hinder the movement of physicians or patients. The problem faced by many East African countries, as well as Africa as a whole, is that the many infrustructures that are in the way of cell phone and telemedicine treatment limit the rate in which both of these two technological advances can proceed. In order for these two advances to work, they must be tested, and then tested again. That is until every little offset in the data is fixed so that all the equipment runs properly and smoothly. However, the feasibility of telemedicine for training purposes is very high because telemedicine needs very little high tech equipment on the patients side, however on the doctors side, the medical equipment is a of higher tech and thus they must be trained first. But after that small problem is overcome, many doctors will be able to use telemedicine to consult their patients without actually seeing them physically and therefore they increase their abilities in the field.
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