The service allows clients to seek answers to their medical problems from health professionals.
AAR’s Phone Medical Doctor, popularly referred to as Phone MD, involves sending an sms on your mobile to 4227.
Through the service, patients can get information about their medical conditions or even lifestyle issues from experts.
According to Dr Maurice Waka, patients will be first required to register with AAR before accessing the service.
"Patients will no longer have to queue in a hospital to find out why the soar throat won’t go away," Dr Maurice Waka said in interview with Tech Insight.
All that is needed is to send any health related question to a dedicated short code and receives an answer.
Specific responses
"After a few minutes, the doctor will respond to the specific query through the same code directly to users handsets," said Dr Waka.
The long-distance consultation also involves using sms, emails, newsletters, and videos.
"The service will carry information about testing and treatment methods, availability of health services, and disease management," Waka says.
"The doctor can also prescribe over-the-counter medicines through this interactive platform without the client having to reveal their identities."
Unlike using search engines for answers, the clinician is able to decipher what the patient wants and helps him out individually.
"The innovation is aimed at avoiding generalised information sharing and giving specific remedies to a specific query or need," Dr Waka said.
He says this service is just one of the products lined up to enrich the AAR staple. The health service provider plans to establish an online doctor helpline.
Patients logged into the portal, will be able to chat with a doctor in real time.
In its advanced stages, Waka said the service will enable clients to for instance send pictures of their skin rash for diagnosis and treatment in what is known as telemedicine in the developed countries.
AAR is also working on developing intends a programme to aid in the online prescription for clients with chronic diseases.
Online prescription
Through the service, a client sends specific data through either the web portal or sms. The hospital’s database picks specific refill drugs that the client has been using, which it forwards to the pharmacy.
"The end result is that the client receives an email and sms notification on when to pick the drugs, which the pharmacist will have prepared by then," Waka said.
"This reduces time wasted queuing at a pharmacy or hospital."
E-medicine is big business in the West even though it yet to pick in the country.
Industry observers, however, say that with the growing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector in the country — buoyed by faster and cheaper Internet connectivity — more institutions will be adopting the model in delivering healthcare services to their clients.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Luke Anami
Quelle/Source: The Standard, 14.06.2010
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