The switch to digital TV freed up radio spectrum formerly used by analog TV broadcasts for all kinds of new services. Now, count telemedicine to rural Botswana as one of those services.
Microsoft has been taking advantage of unused broadcast frequencies known as TV white spaces to test the delivery of broadband Internet to remote parts of Africa. Since last month, the tech giant and several of its partners have been providing telemedicine in the southern African nation of Botswana via these TV white spaces, a first on the continent, Microsoft claims.
Working with the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, Botswana’s Ministry of Health, a local innovation center, the U.S. Agency for International Development and NetHope, a coalition of international humanitarian organizations looking to apply technology in developing countries, Microsoft launched a pilot at hospitals and clinics in three small communities.
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“It’s going to allow patients and people in the most rural areas and the most remote remote areas of Botswana to be able to access specialized healthcare. They won’t have to travel hundreds of kilometers to the capital city [of Gaborone] to see a specialist. They’ll be able to engage in a live telemedicine connection with a specialist based in Gaborone,” Ryan Littman-Quinn, director of mobile health informatics for the Botswana-UPenn Partnership, said in a video produced by Microsoft’s 4Afrika economic development initiative.
“This dramatically changes the ability of clinicians to communicate with each other and to be able to capture data and share data from hospitals and clinics anywhere with other hospitals and clinics,” added Peg Molloy, president and CEO of Vista LifeSciences, a U.S.-based global health IT company that also is providing technology for the pilot.
Initially, patients are being screened for cervical cancer or for dermatological signs of HIV/AIDS, according to the video.