After reading this amusing article, I realised how free web services like Twitter, blogging and Facebook could change the style and tone of healthcare particularly in a country like South Africa.

The article goes on about how Twitter, a free micro-blogging service, is being used by companies like Starbucks and Amazon.com to monitor their customer's reactions and opinions about their products.

And how protestors used it as a rallying tool in a country called Moldova

But, what really enthralled me and left my mind swelling with prolific innovative, ideas, was the Kickbee.

It's a machine developed by Corey Menscher, a graduate Student of New York University. It consisted of an elastic band with vibration sensors, worn by his pregant wife. And everytime the baby kicked, the machine sent a message to Twitter saying, for example :

“I kicked Mommy at 13:34 PM on Sun Mar 9!”

That little kicker had already started blogging from the placid abode of Mommy's uterus! Talk about being tech-ready!

Imagine the possibilities of such ideas in the healthcare industry. A doctor could use a machine that measured a patient's BP or glucose levels. Or perhaps monitor how compliant a patient is to their medication.

A doctor could even keep track of his patient's daily activities like where or how often they exercise, what kind of meals they have, their general health and emotional status. The list can be as long as your creative imagination wants it to be.

The doctor could take it a step further. Here's an example:

You are a doctor working at a Rural hospital in South Africa. You have queues of patients to attend to and it's really difficult to give enough of your time and attention to each and every patient. Some might have BP problems and some diabetes. Others are perhaps on TB and HIV treatment. Some are having emotional and psychological problems. Some difficulty coping with their illness.

This is perhaps an everyday clinical picture in a South African hospital. And being a country where doctors face huge workloads and staff shortage, it is not feasible to give proper attention and much required insight and hence build a very good doctor-patient relationship so pertinent to quality healthcare.

So what you decide to do is go to the relevant communities from where your patients usually come, and educate them on services like Twitter and Facebook. Ofcourse they might not be computer literate let alone have access to one, however there is a growing number of people with cellphones and perhaps there's a way around with this.

Or the hospital or government could provide community cafes etc... and educational workshops for this purpose. I really haven't thought about it but I am sure there is definitely a way around to make this service accessible to such communities. Even the media such as radio, TV and newspapers can be powerful educators.

Then you could start a forum or a blog, or even a Facebook group or network, where your patients can leave their thoughts, feelings, updates etc... as well as follow them on Twitter and also enable them to follow you and thus building a consistent and healthy relationship with them. The forums and networks could even be run using the local languages, making it even more comfortable and easier for patients to express themeselves.

You could even give advice to rural mothers about chilhood diets etc.. and put up regular medical advice which patients could interact and learn with.

If your patients are using devices like BP monitors or blood glucose monitors “married” to Twitter, you could just visit their profiles and extrapolate a pretty could history and insight into their health status.

Twitter and Facebook are free services and so are blogging services like Wordpress and Blogger.
These services can catalyse our healthcare system and even improve the doctor-patient relationship. This will speed up a doctor's consultations and even give the doctor an opportunity to get feedback on his methods and approaches. It could even open up huge doors to community reasearch etc where researchers could use it to accelarate there analyses etc.

There are several hurdles to implementing such ideas in a country like South Africa due to issues like computer literacy, costs etc...But I obstinately believe it can easily be overcome.

Any ideas on its implementation? Any loopholes? Any suggestions on how the problems can be overcome or perhaps you have ideas of even better reaching power? I will be thrilled to hear them!
:-)