Projects
Telemedical Facility in Nepal using Optical Fibre.
On United Nations’ scale, Nepal consistently ranks near the bottom with Human Development Index (HDI) 0.527. Occupying total area of 147181 sq. km, it has a population of more than 27 millions of which only 48.6% are literate and 31% of the population (FY 03/04) is below the poverty line [1]. According to WHO 2005 only about 10% of the population has access to medical health. Most of the rural population suffers from various diseases and unsurprisingly a large fraction of it looses their life due to the lack of doctors attending them. Mostly doctors and other medical professionals, with regard to their careers, concentrate themselves in the cities; majorly the capital, Kathmandu.
Owing to the horrible condition of the health service at Nepal, we decided to take a step in attempting to improve the health conditions of Nepal. We, a group of four young engineering students studying in Pulchowk Campus, brainstormed along with few enthusiastic students of University of Kiel , Germany and reached to the conclusion of developing a project titled “Telemedical Facility Using Optical Fiber Communication in Nepal”.
What the project is all about?
Telemedicine is application of clinical medicine where medical information is transferred through the phone or the Internet and sometimes other networks for the purpose of consulting, and sometimes remote medical procedures or examinations.
In our module, we have planned to use optical fiber for communication medium. The project creates a platform where the patients can communicate to doctors remotely under the supervision of a trained health worker. Our system collects the details from the patient and provide the same details to the doctor who is in the other end of the communication channel. The doctor analyzes the problem on the basis of audio/video inputs he receives from the patient and the other related data he receives from the test and measurements done by the trained health worker. The basic flow of our system is depicted in the figure below.
Project Members
Team Members (On Nepal side):
Team Members (On Germany side):
Site of Implementation: Tatopani VDC, Nepal
Project Proposal
We together developed a proposal for this project. Our proposal was awarded as one of the best 10 ten proposals that is based on the Millennium Development Goals proposed by UN. You can download and read the proposal here.
Current Status
The project is in the development phase and we are currently in the phase of initial preparation.
