Design and initial implementation of telehealth and rural telemedicine services for deployment in Rio Santiago Network, Condorcanqui - Amazonas, Peru

Resumen

The isolation barriers of the multiple communities settled in the Amazon rain forest region greatly affect the living conditions of its population. For the case reported in this paper, is around 9500 inhabitants in the five intervention localities of the Santiago River basin. The Santiago River Health Network operates one health center staffed with one physician, while the remaining four health posts are managed by health technicians with basic medical training (ranging from 3 to 24 months of attendance at a technical medical school). The applied research work reported here aims to strengthen diagnostic and treatment capacities for public maternal and child health care in the Santiago River Basin of the Peruvian Amazon at a time of great vulnerability for Primary Health Care due to the SARS-CoV2 virus and COVID19 pandemic. It relies on rural telemedicine applications to bring health services where they do not reach or reach precariously and contribute to the population’s access to quality health services. In this context, the initiative puts Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at the service of health so that rural health technicians can make better decisions with remote support from specialists who advise them, provide safer and higher quality care to the population, especially women and their children, and so that the later can decide on their own health with more informed decision-making. Consequently, the focus was on a single result: the design of a Telemedicine System oriented towards the promotion, prevention, and care of maternal and child health for its future implementation.