Social Distance
Conditions
Keywords
Telemedicine, Mobile phone, Rural physicians, Mongolia
Brief summary
Objective This study is aimed to estimate the distance, time and the cost of travel saved by patients who are seeking tele-dermatology (TD) service though smart mobile phones in the resource poor settings at the rural clinics of Mongolia. Methods A cluster-randomised trial was conducted for six months at the 20 rural health clinics selected from three districts in Mongolia. With a computer-generated sequence, health clinics were randomly allocated either to the intervention group, in which all general practitioners (GPs) received TD consultation through Sana system, or the control group, in which GPs referred patients to the dermatologist at district hospital whenever needed. The primary outcome was to estimate the distance traveled, times spend and the cost of travel required in receiving dermal care for patients in rural Mongolia. Analysis was done to estimate the difference between the aforementioned parameters among intervention and control groups.
Detailed description
The investigators used Sana system, that is a mobile phone-based, open source software platform for telemedicine services. The Android-based system supports multimedia, location-based data, and text. In the village health clinic, a healthcare worker will interact with a patient and collects data through a step-by-step clinical questionnaire on a smart mobile phone. As patients' data is uploaded to an open source electronic medical record system (OpenMRS) with a diagnosis-specific information and images. The consultant can access the clinical information about the patient and make appropriate diagnoses and treatment recommendations from the secondary hospital.
Interventions
DEVICEMobile Phone
Investigators used Sana system, that is a mobile phone-based, open source software platform for telemedicine services. The Android-based system supports multimedia, location-based data, and text. In the village health clinic, a healthcare worker will interact with a patient and collects data through a step-by-step clinical questionnaire on a smart mobile phone. As patients' data is uploaded to an open source electronic medical record system (OpenMRS) with a diagnosis-specific information and images. The consultant can access the clinical information about the patient and make appropriate diagnoses and treatment recommendations from the secondary hospital.
Sponsors
Health Science University of Mongolia
Taipei Medical University
Study design
Allocation
NA
Intervention model
SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* Patients aged 18-98 years visiting with dermal problem.
Exclusion criteria
* Patients who do not need dermal care. * Patients who are already under treatment for dermal problem.
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Comparison between the number of referrals in the control and intervention groups | up to 5 months | Outcome measures are the number of referrals done in the control and in the intervention groups. We compared the difference in the number of referrals with Sana system and without. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Satisfaction by physicians and patients by questionnaire | up to 5 months | Both physicians and patients who were in the intervention group were satisfied by the Sana system. |
Countries
Taiwan
Outcome results
None listed