Telehealth program to help amputees

MANILA, Philippines –  The Physicians for Peace (PfP), an international non-profit organization which provides training and education to health care professionals as well as medical supplies and clinical care to patients, has teamed up with Smart Communications, Inc. to make health care for amputees more efficient and organized.

Smart, in collaboration with the Ateneo de Manila Java Wireless Competency Center for Smart, has developed a new Java application called Amputee Screening via Cellphone NeTworking (ASCENT), which main purpose is to enable doctors to evaluate cases and give advice on the use of prosthesis for amputees before seeing them, since many care-seekers are located in remote and underserved communities.

ASCENT was recently successfully used by health workers who participated in the medical mission of PfP Philippines’ Walking Free Program, which took place on Tablas island in Romblon with support from Gov. Vicente Firmalo and UP-PGH and the UERM medical center.

Usually, health workers interview patients and take their medical history with pen and paper but with the use of ASCENT, the procedure is simplified. The patient information is keyed in on a cell phone and sent to a centralized web-based database via multimedia message, along with photos taken with the cell phone camera.

While this new technological breakthrough is very user friendly, it will also potentially serve as a tool for constructing a registry of the disabled. With an estimated 1.2 million amputees in the Philippines, a number experts say is conservative because of under-reporting due to geographic location, lack of access to facilities and socio-economic barriers, there is an urgent need for such a registry.

“The health sector can greatly benefit from mobile and web technologies. While telehealth is still in its infancy in the Philippines, small applications like ASCENT can help bridge the divide,” said Ramon Isberto, head of Smart’s Public Affairs Group.

PfP plans to train more health workers in the use of ASCENT to allow them to prescreen patients in the communities they serve. Health workers find that ASCENT’s navigation is easy to learn, and its data retrieval system via the web is convenient for doctors who are on the go.

Furthermore, amputees who passed the medical screening can look forward to having their artificial limbs after a month or so.