Currently there are a few grass roots initiatives, such as the Apollo project in India, that are using mobile phones to offer at least a basic level of telemedicine services to remote villages in developing nations. These systems are based on SMS technology which unfortunately is very limited as to the level of interaction that it allows with the patient. And even with these SMS services, rural villages still remain totally disconnected from all other aspects of eHealth that require an internet connection.
On the other extreme stand services in the developed world such as American Well or Myca, advanced telemedicine applications that take advantage of braodband internet connections to offer full audio/video tele-consultation with physicians. Until now it seemed almost impossible that remote rural villages, lacking even basic infrastructure such as electricity, could ever hope to attain these same services through braodband connections.
Therefore the following questions must be asked; how can we bridge this digital divide between developed and developing nations in eHealth? What technologies will allow developing nations to leapfrog legacy systems and move straight up to the level of service that we enjoy in the developed world? It’s with these questions in mind that we stumbled upon a post by Zee M Kane from The Next Web blog in which he describes the SolarNetOne project whose goal it is to “develop a feasible, sustainable solution to bring the internet to places that have no connectivity, no phone service and no electricity.”
This low-cost system, developed by Gnuveau, encompasses a solar powered internet hub running on Linux with modified hardware to accomodate for low power consumption and the rugged conditions found in many developing countries. These hubs use either VSAT or long range wifi with each station acting as both an access point and a repeater that transfers signal to the next station along, allowing for broadband to be distributed over hundreds of kilometers. It is precisely this kind of system that will act as the broadband backbone to deliver internet services over long distances to rural villages and combined with other initiatives such as the OLPC laptop, may be the key to realizing a not-too-distant future in which the digital divide in eHealth begins to dissapear.
Here is Scott Johnson from Gnuveau explaining exactly how their system works :
