Pilot Results of a Telemedicine Social Franchise in Rural Kenya: Evidence of Sustainable Livelihood Creation

Holmes, Katelyn; Suffian, Stephen; Lackey, Jeffrey D.; Mehta, Khanjan

doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2014.07.057

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…CHWs are unpaid volunteers with limited resources for monitoring the health of their communities, and specifi cally the high-risk populations within them. the income generated by the MHWs throughout the pilot was published at the Humanitarian Technology: Science, Systems and Global Impact Conference in 2014 (Holmes et al, 2014). All training materials, such as those for the usage of the medical devices, were developed in a way that leveraged CHWs existing health knowledge.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demonstrating demand for preventive health services in rural Kenya

Lackey

Suffian

Dzombak

et al. 2015

JHE

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Developing countries like Kenya suffer from a severe lack of healthcare professionals.Access to primary care is further limited when large distances must be travelled for basic medical care,and often times the decision to seek professional help is made too late. Preventive health services cansave lives by diagnosing serious medical conditions early and subsequently reducing the likelihood oflife-threatening diseases. The rapid increase in the global incidence of chronic diseases like diabetes,hypertension, and heart disease makes preventive health services particularly important. Trainedcommunity health workers (CHWs) operated the Mashavu telemedicine system in Nyeri Countyof Kenya over the course of fi ve months. The Mashavu system comprised of a netbook computer, aweb camera, and other basic supplies. CHWs provided patients with two alternative services: (1)body measurements including blood pressure, weight, and body mass index (BMI) or (2) a fullconsultation that supplemented the measurements with health indicators and a brief survey. Alightweight website was developed to allow CHWs to send this information to a nearby nurse. Thiswebsite was accessed by leveraging the 3G cell networks that are ubiquitous in Kenya. During thefi ve-month pilot, 777 patients paid for these services. Nearly one-third of patients used the serviceas an opportunity for a routine health check. The median age among patients was 40 years and 35 %of all patients were between the ages of 21-35. The pilot described in this paper demonstrated toCHWs that community members value health information and are willing to pay a small fee for it.This pilot suggests that as developing countries struggle to address the double burden of chronicand infectious disease, fee-for-service preventive health services can serve as an innovative meansto achieve economic development and improved community health.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demonstrating demand for preventive health services in rural Kenya

Lackey

Suffian

Dzombak

et al. 2015

JHE

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA) is a tool for analysing "the poor operating in the context of vulnerability" [25], looking beneath the direct income, and widening the concept to understand other aspects besides the temporary monetary aspects [26]. SLA has been applied to studies of technology adaptation in rural Kenya [27], entrepreneurship in Ghana [28], as well as community-based tourism [21,22]. Walsham [14] has recommended the usage of the sustainable livelihood framework to link ICT4D research to theory, allowing for generalisability.…”

Section: Sustainable Livelihood Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Digital Community-Based Tourism Platform to Hosts’ Livelihood

Keskinen

Arvila

Winschiers‐Theophilus

et al. 2020

Communications in Computer and Information Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper, we present the results of a contextual inquiry study in a communityCommunity-based Based tourism Tourism (CBT) village. We investigate the influence of an enabling digital service platform for tourism that rural Tanzanians utilise to attract and host guests. Our interviews and observations show that hosting tourists delivers positive short-term livelihood outcomes (income, visitors), but the long-term impact (social, infrastructure) to the communities requires deeper consideration. We recommend that sustainable digital service platforms for CBT should be developed and assessed including their features in addressing long-term impacts on livelihood. We propose the following topics for consideration in future development of digital CBT platforms: the role of surrounding communities, rewards to platform contributors, enabling of indirect economic activities, understanding conflict-of-interest between communities and platform, empowermenting all of the users, and monitoring the local performance of the platform for its users.

show abstract

“…These low-cost strategies provide evidence supporting the use of Digital Health technologies for healthcare in different settings within developing countries. Interestingly, a pilot study on the use of Digital Health technologies, such as telemedicine, did not only improve access to healthcare services, but had an economic impact on local citizens through income generation (Holmes et al 2014). This points to other areas where digital health technologies are used and explains that digital health technologies can be beneficial not only to the healthcare system, patients, healthcare workers, and healthcare providers, but to the society at large where the socioeconomic status of citizens can be improved.…”

Section: Digitalization: Case Study Of Africamentioning

confidence: 99%