Solomon Islands Tele-medicine network

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22 Mar 08

We recently returned from a trip to the Solomon Islands where we discussed the extension of the existing tele-medicine links to an in-country referral and discussion network as well as improving communication between the National Referral Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney.

The three aspects of the telemedicine network are:

1. In Country Discussion

Using the email interface to the iPath platform, doctors in the provinces will be able to post cases to the system. These will be received by the Specialists in Honiara who can then comment / discuss the cases through the system. The potential benefits are:

• Better management of patients in provinces
• Reduction in patient transfer costs from provinces to Honiara
• Greater transparency of cases throughout the hospital

2. Specialist group discussion

Extend the existing specialist discussion groups to include more departments. These groups allow for cases originating from the specialists at the Solomons to be discussed with external specialists from around the world including the St Vincent’s doctors (but not exclusively).

3. Patient Transfer Program

Patients being transferred to St Vincents under the existing arrangement will be discussed in the other groups. When it is deemed a patient is suitable for transfer, their case will be moved to a special group to allow the doctors from St Vincents to be aware of the case prior to transfer.

Furthermore doctors in Australia will be able to be kept in the follow up loop when the patients go home.

There was a lot of interest in the National Referral Hospital as well as the Gizo Hospital to expand the network in these ways.