Batanes Telehealth Program Inked

Batanes is 225 years old! As part of the Batanes Foundation Day celebrations, National Telehealth Center Director Alvin Marcelo, National Institutes of Health Deputy Executive Director Vicente Belizario, and DOH-Information Management Services Director Crispinita Valdez supported by NThC staff Cristina Onzaga, Al Merca, and Alexandra Bernal, RN traveled to Batanes to take part in the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement of the Batanes Telehealth Program with Governor Telesforo Castillejos, Mayor Demetrius Paul Narag of Basco, and Mayor Nicanor Doplito of Uyugan. This program, which has three main components: telemedicine, continuing professional education, and establishing an electronic health records for RHUs, seeks deliver health care from a distance. Dr. HR Aujero, Field Operations Coordinator of the National Telehealth Center, was sent to Batanes on a three-month stint to implement the project.

Telemedicine is simply providing healthcare to patients from a remote location. Doctors and selected nurses of Batanes General Hospital, the Provincial Health Office, the Municipality of Uyugan and the hospitals in the islands of Itbayat (Itbayat District Hospital) and Sabtang (Sabtang Community Hospital) have been trained on how to present patients through videoconferencing and how to take pictures of X-ray plates and lesions. A number of patients' x-ray plates have been referred to the Philippine General Hospital for official reading of a radiologist. And slides have also been sent to Manila to be read by a pathologist. Other avenues that have been utilized include SMS, and MMS. The latter has been very helpful for dermatology materials.

It is also the program's goals to improve the knowledge and skills of the other health workers such as the midwives and barangay health workers. Video presentations have been produced by the National Telehealth Center in cooperation with USAID and the UP Open University's Multimedia Center for these front line healthworkers. Each session consists of a video presentation and is followed by an open forum with a specialist on the topic from the Philippine General Hospital. To date, there have been three sessions in the province. The first in the island municipality of Itbayat on household poisoning with Dr. Laura Aguinaldo (April 22,2008). A session on stroke with Dr. Paul Pasco was held in the Provincial Health Office in Basco (May 5, 2008). And as part of the Batanes Day celebrations, another session on household poisoning with Dr. Laura Aguinaldo was held in the PHO (June 27, 2008). The last one however had the Q&A via cellular phone due to limited internet connection.

The last component is the utilization of the Community Health Information Tracking System, an electronic health record for Rural Health Units. This customizable, user friendly software is free, thus lowering costs for the LGUs. Pilot sites for CHITS are municipalities of Basco and Uyugan and the provincial health office. Mr Alison Perez Senior Programmer of the UP College of Medicine’s Medical Informatics Unit came to Batanes to install CHITS in the pilot sites and train the health workers on its use.

With the pact signed, stakeholders from both ends sealed their commitment on the program and expressed their enthusiasm for the next phase.

NThC Attends tPCA Charter Workshop

The National Telehealth Center, through its Central Operations Coordinator Dr. Alex Gavino, and Telehealth Nurse Ms. Pia Athena Tolentino, participated in the Charter Workshop of the telecentre.org-Philippine Community e-Center Academy (tPCA) held at The Legend Villas, Mandaluyong City last June 4-6, 2008.

The CeC Roadmap specifically cites the establishment of a CeC academy as one priority strategy supporting the capacity-building goal of the Philippine CeC Program which is to ensure the availability ofcompetent knowledge workers in every Community e-Center. The tPCA is a consortium of ICT4D and CeC capability-building and content development institutions (government, private and academic) who collaborate towards the timely delivery of relevant, useful and quality capability building programs for CeC knowledge workers. Along with CICT, the following are among the consortium partners: 1) Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP); 2) Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC); 3) UP-National Telehealth Center; 4) University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU); 5) Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) Open Academy for Agriculture; 6) Intel Technology Philippines, Inc.; 6)Microsoft Philippines, Inc.; and 8) telecentre.org.
The objectives of the workshop were: 1) to organize the tPCA consortium; 2) to formulate the tPCA Charter; and 3) to formulate an action plan for 1 year. The workshop was composed of 4 modules, specifically: 1) Validation of the tPCA Purpose (Vision, Mission, Functions, Components and Roles); 2) Organizational Options and Relationships; 3) Resource Generation and Management; 4) Accreditation Procedures and Standards, Organizational Issues and Action Planning Exercise.
After the 3-day session, certain agreements were reached and the draft of the Charter shall be made available to the Charter members later this month. Hopefully, the Charter will be ratified by August 2008.

This endeavor emphasizes the NThC's commitment in enhancing Community e-Center services through e-Health.

Hippocratic Oath or Hypocritical

During oath-taking ceremonies of medical professionals, the modern version of hippocratic oath is sworn to with great pride usually because of the fact that we were able to pass a difficult board exam, not to mention a difficult training. Sad to say, during practice of most medical professionals nowadays, it seems to me, that most of the lines sworn before, are already forgotten by most of our colleagues.

Take for example “I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures that are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism”, nowadays, what are we doing, what do you see?
Take another line or phrase “I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know” Again, what are we doing, and what do you see?
And another phrase “I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability” Again, what are we doing and what do you see?
Finally, the last phrase “...may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter...” Again, do we still see the hippocratic oath in our lives? Or are we now one of those who have become hypocritical? What do you see...