Psychology via PC

The World Health Organisation estimates that 1 500 million people worldwide are suffering from mental illness of which 75% live in developing countries.

In SA, it is estimated that up to 30% of the population suffer from some form of mental health disorder, a large proportion living in rural areas. The inappropriate distribution of health practitioners further exacerbates this problem. Most of these professionals are located in urban centres and those living in the rural community have difficulty getting access to their expertise.

In an attempt to address this, a combined effort between public and private enterprise has led to an initiative that could better the lives of many rural patients.

A telepsychology pilot project, driven by Motorola, and involving the Medical Research Council (MRC), the University of the Western Cape (UWC), the Karoo Resource Centre (KRC) in Beaufort West, Telkom and Westcon was launched on Wednesday at the UWC.

It uses video conferencing to connect psychologists to rural clinics from their desks and consists of a PC running video conferencing at UWC connected to one at the KRC in Beaufort West.

The partners see this project as the first step towards a countrywide network, in conjunction with the Department of Health and the medical community, which will provide health care to all South Africans.

Peter Fehrsen, business unit manager for Motorola at Westcon, said that the three key IT partners in this initiative, Motorola, Telkom and Westcon, have worked together to integrate and ensure that this pilot will be successful.

Westcon is sponsoring the video conferencing software and PC required to drive the software. Fehrsen added that the equipment used is Motorola`s Vanguard 320, a multi-service networking device within Motorola`s Infinity Access Range. The Vanguard 320 provides a LAN interface for interconnecting small offices.

Telkom supplied and installed an ISDN line and will cover the cost of the line for the duration of the project. Renee Kirkland, Telkom spokesperson, said: "We are committed to developing the most robust, high-speed network required to transmit medical images cost-effectively and timely to academic or provincial hospital sites."

She added that Telkom would use different technologies depending on the existing infrastructure and requirements of the various health care sites.

Motorola has provided the technical expertise to put this all together, including the integration, testing and training of the psychologists to use the equipment; as well as continued maintenance.

Motorola`s country manager, Dave Reddy, sees this project as being twofold for his company. "It provides us with the opportunity to develop our social responsibility programme. The rural communities need to know about us because they could be our future buyers and suppliers. Also with the infrastructure roll-out in future, we hope to sell our products, technology and services."

The chief director of health information, evaluation and research for the National Department of Health, Nthari Matsau, concluded: "We welcome this initiative and pledge our support to any telemedicine initiatives that help address identified national needs and which are in line with the national telemedicine policy and strategy."