Hierarchical Model Based LAN Architecture & VSAT-based WAN for a National Telemedicine Network in a Developing Country: Case of Ethiopia

Due to difficult terrain and limited transportation infrastructures, developing countries continue to suffer from the absence of extended and adequate medical and healthcare services. This inadequacy in basic health services is often accompanied by very low patient-doctor ratios. It has been suggested that telemedicine offers a basis for a cost-effective health-care system in geographical remote areas in such developing countries minimizing the disparity between rural and urban areas. It now seems, despite a slow start, that this awareness has slowly gained traction in many developing countries among both governmental and private health professionals and policy makers. We argue, however, that there is a gap between current telemedicine efforts in developing countries and the actual existing connectivity infrastructure resulting in faulty, inefficient and expensive designs. The particular case of Ethiopia, one such developing country where telemedicine continues to carry significant promises, is investigated and reported here. In this paper, we proposes a comprehensive design of network architecture for a nation-wide telemedicine network that connects all regional hospitals and health centers with the urban public and government hospitals. The proposal includes a web based telemedicine system, which provides basic services for medical tele-consultation. The system can be used by healthcare providers to store and retrieve patient information, write referrals and give feedback to referrals by using a relational database for data management and a web based Graphical User Interface (GUI) specifically designed for telemedicine. We also provide a prototype network architecture that allows the integration of new hospitals and clinics into the network with VSAT and terrestrial LAN. The architecture also supports the provision of Internet Protocol (IP) interface that enables seamless integration of a trans-national telemedicine component for the physicians and other health care professionals currently practicing anywhere in the world.