Mobile Healthcare System for Health Checkups and Telemedicine in Post-Disaster Situations.
Portable Healthcare Clinic (PHC) is a mobile healthcare system comprising of medical sensors and health assessment criteria. It has been applied in Bangladesh for the last two years as a pilot program to identify non-communicable diseases. In this study, we adapted PHC to fit post-disaster conditions. The PHC health assessment criteria are redesigned to deal with emergency cases and healthcare worker insufficiency. A new algorithm makes an initial assessment of age, symptoms, and whether the person is seeing a doctor. These changes will make the turn-around time shorter and will enable reaching the most affected patients better. We tested the operability and turn-around time of the adapted system at the debris flow disaster shelters in Hiroshima, Japan. Changing the PHC health assessment criteria and other solutions such as a list of medicine preparation makes the PHC system switch into an emergency mode more smoothly following a natural disaster.
Medical Information Center, Kyushu University Hospital, Japan.
Min
M
Hu
Institute of Decision Science for a Sustainable Society, Kyushu University, Japan.
Megumi
M
Sugimoto
Institute of Decision Science for a Sustainable Society, Kyushu University, Japan.
Andrew Rebeiro
AR
Hargrave
Medical Information Center, Kyushu University Hospital, Japan.
Yasunobu
Y
Nohara
Clinical Nursing Research Laboratory, Hiroshima University, Japan.
Michiko
M
Moriyama
Institute of Decision Science for a Sustainable Society, Kyushu University, Japan.
Ashir
A
Ahmed
Telemedicine Development Center of Asia, Kyushu University Hospital, Japan.
Shuji
S
Shimizu
Medical Information Center, Kyushu University Hospital, Japan.
Naoki
N
Nakashima
D001459:Bangladesh; D054597:Disaster Medicine / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D004632:Emergency Medical Services / Q000379:methods*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008952:Mobile Health Units / Q000458:organization & administration*; D010808:Physical Examination / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D010865:Pilot Projects; D019114:Remote Consultation / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D012984:Software