Title
Asynchronous remote medical consultation for Ghana
Abstract
Computer-mediated communication systems can be used to bridge the gap between doctors in underserved regions with local shortages of medical expertise and medical specialists worldwide. To this end, we describe the design of a prototype remote consultation system intended to provide the social, institutional and infrastructural context for sustained, self-organizing growth of a globally-distributed Ghanaian medical community. The design is grounded in an iterative design process that included two rounds of extended design fieldwork throughout Ghana and draws on three key design principles (social networks as a framework on which to build incentives within a self-organizing network; optional and incremental integration with existing referral mechanisms; and a weakly-connected, distributed architecture that allows for a highly interactive, responsive system despite failures in connectivity). We discuss initial experiences from an ongoing trial deployment in southern Ghana.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1145/1357054.1357173
Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research
Keywords
DocType
Volume
social networking
Conference
abs/0801.1927
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
27
1.88
17
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Rowena Luk1393.48
Melissa Ho226126.25
Paul M. Aoki31194264.37