Telemedicine is a form of electronic health that involves the use of telecommunication and information technologies to provide clinical healthcare from a distance.
In an enclosed room at Rwanda Military Hospital in Kanombe, students listen attentively to instructions from a video interaction. This is part of their medical training, a session that allows them to interface with senior health professionals from top countries around the world. However, this practice is not entirely limited to teaching future doctors. On the opposite side of this hospital building, medics gather in a conference room to discuss sophisticated cases with other doctors from different hospitals who have more knowledge on the issues.
This is telemedicine; a trend of offering medical services that started as early as 2011 at Rwanda Military Hospital. The aim of this new approach was to improve student training and consequently medical service delivery through regular consultation of experts on advanced medical cases.
"Everyone is involved nowadays; it is part of the medical practice. Medical students follow the training in real time but the technology applies even in medical procedures. You could be having a patient here in Rwanda but get guidance from other countries," says Dr Pacifique Mugenzi, the head of research and education at Rwanda Military Hospital.
Dr Mugenzi, who is also a trained oncologist, adds that at least once a week, doctors at the hospital meet to discuss complicated cases with other doctors, eventually deriving useful solutions.
"We have discussed surgical cases, gynaecological cases and I recall a liver case where we deliberated about its management. Many issues are involved in these discussions but most of them revolve around surgery," adds Dr Mugenzi.
Unlike the ordinary practice that requires patients to interface with doctors face-to-face, barriers of access to medical services such as long distance are not involved in telemedicine, meaning that medical services that would be unavailable in some distant communities can be provided.
Dr Mugenzi adds that currently the Rwanda Military Hospital is using telemedicine to train undergraduate and post-graduate doctors from the country to solve the problem of distance and travel costs required for physical presence.
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