Rural E-Health Infrastructure Development - E-Healthcare Systems and Wireless Communications - page 183

only concerted leadership on health issues within
the public health sector would help solving these
problems (Lee, Sridhar & Patel, 2009).

must be effective and sustainable in order to stimu-
late investment in power-plant modernization and
in rationale energy usage. Developing countries
can count on a variety of potential electrical
energy sources, including solar, hydroelectric,
people-powered, fossil-fueled, geothermal and
eolian. Cost remains a major factor in obtaining
affordable power sources. But power sources
are frequently undersized, battery and charging
systems are often misused and therefore prone to
failure, and there is a lack of standard and easy to
use interfaces for switching among various power
sources based on demand and capacity.

3. THE HTC CHALLENGES

Global healthcare is indeed missing a list of
guidelines and a comprehensive identification
of challenges to be taken into consideration for
developing countries. This is why the Humanitar-
ian Technology Challenge (HTC) 1 project was
created. Its main scope is to identify the major
challenges brought by lack of adequate healthcare
provision in developing countries. This initiative
was developed by technologists as well as hu-
manitarians, non-profit organizations, students,
government employees and others that come
together to identify, work and solve some of the
worlds most pressing humanitarian challenges.
HTC is a unique concept, developed in such a
way that it is open-source and collaborative at
the same time.
The HTC is a joint initiative of the IEEE,
the world's largest trade association of technical
professionals, the IEEE Foundation, the United
Nations Foundation and Vodafone Foundation
Partnership. The project enables technologists
to work with humanitarian aid professional,
contributing time and expertise, to solve three
major challenges.

Data Connectivity of Rural
District Health Offices

In many developing countries, healthcare is pro-
vided by rural district health offices, which may
not have data connection to other health centers
in the area. Being able to exchange data between
central and remote field health facilities/offices is
crucial. Some of the reasons for establishing this
connectivity are as follows: interaction among
healthcare professional; retrieval of patients'
medical records; transferring medical records to
a central database; providing a link for remote di-
agnosis/treatment, consultation with psychiatrists
education/training for staff; alerting offices about
emergencies and outbreaks.

Individual ID Tied to Health Records

Reliable Electricity

Not long ago, the use of Electronic Health Records
(EHRs) in developing nations was thought to be
unrealistic. What projects existed used either
expensive commercial software in large organiza-
tions or user-developed software for specialized
purposes, such as to manage a specific disease.
Since then, several successful EHR systems have
been implemented in developing countries, due
in no small part to the increase in the availability
of information technology in these areas. These
factors, along with recognition of the benefits of

Everywhere in the world, reliable electric power
is key to economic development and medical care.
In developing countries, electricity is fundamental
for many essential services, including those that
increase income and benefit rural areas. Major
uses for electrical power include: agriculture,
water purification and distribution, healthcare,
education, commercial and industry applications,
bidirectional communications, standard of living.
Energy planning policies in developing countries