Past, present and future: experiences and lessons from telehealth projects

Elder, Laurent; Clarke, Michael

The health sector in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) faces a number of key challenges, such as equitable access to health care services, the reduction of costs, and the necessary increase of disease prevention measures among low-income and vulnerable populations, among others. As with Acacia and PAN, the LAC prospectus affirms that digital technologies and ICTbased solutions provide a powerful tool to change the ways in which health services are managed and delivered to the population at large, and to low-income and marginalized communities in particular. ICTs and the Internet, for example, can bring to these communities (at low cost) contacts with larger health centres located in urban areas, opening access to health prevention measures, consultations, updated valuable medical information, coordination in the treatment of patients, adequate and timely distribution of medicines, collection and effective distribution of valuable data on profiles and patterns of threatening epidemics, contagious diseases and other ailments, among others. Attention will also be paid to the relationship between environmental degradation and its impact on the health of the LAC population (see www.crdi.ca/uploads/user-S/11625788011Public_ICT4D_Americas-programdescription.pdf).