Sunday, October 20, 2013

UP Cebu goes “techy” with telemedicine facility

By Hazel Pacturan
   
              University of the Philippines Cebu seeks to link its whole system through Telemedicine.

            Telemedicine is the communication system combined with telecommunication and information technologies in order to provide clinical health care at a distance. It helps eliminate distance barriers and can improve access to medical services that would often not be consistently available in distant rural communities. It is also used to save lives in critical care and emergency situations.

            Telemedicine had its first session last September 19, 2013 with the some hospitals here in Cebu City as a test run to see if it is already capable to conduct one. It gained positive feedbacks from the doctors. Ms. Sandra Famador, CSU head said that telemedicine will benefit the system since it can save traveling time for the meeting.

            Telemedicine is not limited to the medical setting. University of the Philippines Cebu is planning to introduce this communication system to link the entire system through video conferencing, and to give a solution to distant communication problems.

            The facility is video conferencing equipment and an audio-video capable. The use of a public IP will create the connection between two parties: two groups of people talking to each other through video conference. This will benefit students of the UP Cebu since telemedicine enables a large number of people to join the communication at a same time.

            The Computing Services Unit (CSU) funded by Electronic UP (EUP) is assigned for this project.

             “There are still vibrations and feedbacks so I had to go from one room to another,” said Ms. Famador Vibrations are caused by the noise created by the room itself.  She also added that there is already room intended for the telemedicine but it will still require big amount of money to renovate it.  “I expect that this new facility will be able to cure to the problems regarding communicating from a distance. I hope the students will be able to benefit from it,” said Brille Camposano, UP Cebu student.

Due to room problems, there is still no exact date as to when the telemedicine facility will open in UP Cebu.



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