title: A simple and low-cost Internet-based teleconsultation system that could effectively solve the health care access problems in underserved areas of developing countries.
abstract: In many developing countries including Turkey, telemedicine systems are not in wide use due to the high cost and complexity of the required technology. Lack of these systems however has serious implications on patients who live in rural areas. The objective of this paper is to present a simple and economically affordable alternative to the current systems that would allow experts to easily access the medical data of their remote patients over the Internet. The system is developed in client-server architecture with a user-friendly graphical interface and various services are implemented as dynamic web pages based on PHP. The other key features of the system are its powerful security features and platform independency. An academic prototype is implemented and presented to the evaluation of a group of physicians. The results reveal that the system could find acceptance from the medical community and it could be an effective means of providing quality health care in developing countries.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Kaynaklar Campus, Dokuz Eylül University, Buca, Izmir 35160, Turkey. kuntalp@eee.deu.edu.tr
authors.forename: Mehmet
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kuntalp
authors.forename: Orkun
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Akar
mesh_terms: D003196:Computer Graphics; D016494:Computer Security; D003628:Database Management Systems; D003906:Developing Countries; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D020407:Internet / Q000191:economics; D008507:Medically Underserved Area; D014584:User-Computer Interface