1. Mobile Healthcare System for Health Checkups and Telemedicine in Post-Disaster Situations.
- Author
-
Min Hu, Megumi Sugimoto, Hargrave, Andrew Rebeiro, Yasunobu Nohara, Michiko Moriyama, Ahmed, Ashir, Shuji Shimizu, and Naoki Nakashima
- Subjects
MEDICAL care ,TELEMEDICINE ,MOBILE health ,NATURAL disasters - Abstract
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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF