You are pointing out an important point.
There is also another important issue to address: in developed
countries, the great trend in ICT for health will actually be continuity
of care and teamwork for chronic patients, that is - to be more accurate
- to optimize the way we use our ultra-modern, ultra-expensive health
technologies.
A recent article in a French scientific paper was titled "Can't we stop
a fire using non drinkable water"; the writers demonstrated that our
health technology has reached such a point in quality demand that it can
no longer produces the (low level) drugs that could save hundreds of
thousand lives in less developed countries.
I now feel the same problem with the continuity of care tools I am
working on: is it worth something in developing countries... and worse:
isn't it dangerous to use it in non-democratic places or in places where
husbands will force their wives to show them their health history!
We will probably soon test the Ligne de vie in Africa... we have much to
learn there... and we will have to be honest enough to check the
benefit/risk balance.
Cheers,
Philippe
Wayne WIlson a écrit :
>Molly sent us this data., which is important enough to restate:
>
>To support our focus on developing countries, the biggest challenge is
>equity and the data found in this presentation says it all.
>High-income countries:
> 16% population
> 7% burden of disease
> 89% health spending
> 94% Internet hosts
>Low-income countries:
> 84% population
> 93% burden of disease
> 11% health spending
> 6% Internet hosts
>
>
>To make some other points obvious:
>
> 1) Any solution which involves 'upgrading' the low-income countries to the state of resource consumption which the high-income countries use to support these numbers will only have limited success!
>
> 2) If you didn't understand point #1, the US has roughly 5% of the worlds population and consumes roughly 25% of the worlds oil production. Most of this consumption is split between the transportation sector, electrical generation and food production. Electrical generation is crucial in the IT industry.
>
> 2a) I am 'embedded' in the US health care delivery system, managing computer servers. Our current trend is to obsolete computers every 3 to 5 years, replacing them with ever more powerful and power consuming models. I have been on the 'bleeding' edge of trying to conserve power, but in less than three years of growth, we have exhausted the capacity of our power feeds coming in ~ 30KW and our cooling capacity for that power load.
>
> Therefor, I have to conclude, given all these facts, that software developed with assumptions about infrastructure in the 'high-income' countries could have issues in not finding the same infrastructure in the 'low-income' countries. And this is not to mention the differences in staffing, expertise and thus work organization patterns that are completely different for a deep or complex technological infra-structure.
>
> Thus an ideal opportunity for OSHCA to fuse the concepts around open source with the concepts of 'appropriately' scaled technology and sustainable technology, which will find an immediate application among the majority of worlds population and within the next decade or two will be essential in the 'high-income' countries as well.
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