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Nucleating the development of telemedicine to support healthcare workers in resource-limited settings: a new approach

Collegium Telemedicus (CT) offers a new approach to the problem of starting a store-and-forward telemedicine network for use in low resource settings. The CT organization provides a no-cost template to allow groups to start a network without delay, together with a peer-support environment for those operating the networks. A new group needs only to supply a Guarantor (who accepts responsibility for the work of the network) and a Coordinator (who operates the telemedicine network, allocating cases and ensuring that they are responded to). Communication takes place via secure messaging, which has several advantages over plain email, e.g. all the data are stored centrally, which means that they can be read from a hand-held device such as a smart phone, but do not need to be stored on that device. Users can access the system with a standard web browser. In the first three months, seven networks were established on the CT system by university groups in the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and by a large, multinational humanitarian organisation. In the most active network, there were 86 telemedicine cases in the first three months, i.e. an average submission rate of 7 cases/week. The CT system appears to fulfil its aim of assisting doctors who wish to help colleagues in other countries by improving their access to specialist opinions, while allowing them to maintain control over the new network's use and development. The long term aim of the CT organization is to provide a means of improving the quality of health care at the point of delivery in low resource settings.