SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW: Prof. S. Yunkap Kwankam, Ph.D., CEO at Global eHealth Consultants (GeHCs) and Executive Director, International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (ISfTeH)
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[email protected] www.gehcs.com http://www.isfteh.org/ About S. Yunkap Kwankam, Ph.D. S. Yunkap Kwankam holds a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and was elected to the following American honor associations; Eta Kappa Nu (Electrical Engineering), Tau Beta Pi (Engineering) and Sigma Xi (Research). He is CEO of Global eHealth Consultants (GeHCs), Geneva Switzerland, a leading consultancy group oneHealth policy and strategy. He serves as executive director of the International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (ISfTeH), and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Digital Health. From 2004 through August 2008 he was eHealth coordinator at World Health Organization (WHO), responsible for overall coordination of eHealth work across the Organization. Before joining WHO in 2001, he was professor and director, Center for Health Technology, University of Yaounde, Cameroon. International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (ISfTeH) . He has also published two commissioned books, numerous scientific papers and technical reports. Partial list of S. Yunkap Kwankam, Ph.D., in the media mHealth Mobile Minute, mHealth Summit, Cape Town, South Africa, May-June 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCxIh4FOppk Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio series on eHealth, July-August, 2008, A Seismic Shift, http://www.ehealth-connection.org/content/a-seismic-shift Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio series on eHealth, July-August, 2008, eHealth and Distance Learning, http://www.ehealth-connection.org/content/ehealth-and-distance-learning World Radio Switzerland (WRS) interview on Business Insights program “Rethinking health care across the globe.” Host Pete Forster looks at the ailing global healthcare systems and talks to an expert, Prof. Yunkap Kwankam, director of Global eHealth Consultants, who believes that by applying existing technology differently, health services in developing countries can be radically improved: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 http://worldradio.ch/wrs/programmes/businessinsight/business-insight-rethinking-health-care-across-the.shtml?30667 About Global eHealth Consultants (GeHCs) GeHCs was founded in 2008 by Prof. S. Yunkap Kwankam (B.Sc, M.Sc, Ph.D electrical engineering) in Chavannes-de-Bogis, Switzerland, close to Geneva and the WHO, the main institution in international eHealth. GeHCs is a consulting organization that specializes in mHealth and eHealth (m-eHealth) services in the policy and practice areas in international markets. Its mission is to provide its clients with a high-quality alternative to in-house resources for development of policy and strategic plans, building institutional capacity for m-eHealth, as well as providing market research for m-eHealth development, with a special focus on low- and middle-income countries. About International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (ISfTeH) ISfTeH facilitates the international dissemination of knowledge and experience in Telemedicine and eHealth and provides access to recognized experts in the field worldwide. Medical Travel Today (MTT): Describe your professional background and explain how you founded Global eHealth Consultants (GeHCs). S. Yunkap Kwankam (YK): Professionally, I like to say I am in my fourth career now! During my first career, I was an engineer and had the opportunity to work for General Electric in Cleveland, Ohio, Polaroid in Boston, and Digital Equipment at Maynard in Massachusetts. My second career was in academics — I taught electrical engineering, first at Northeastern University in Boston, then at the University of Yaounde in Cameroon (my home country). At this time, I discovered my real passion: incorporating technology to address health challenges. I founded a center for health technology at the University, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, and in collaboration with the British Columbia Institute of Technology – the School of Health Sciences. In 2001, I started my third career when I was invited by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, to do health technology on a global scale. In December of 2003, WHO created a new division on eHealth, which I was in charge of until I retired in August 2008. Retirement led to my fourth career-founder of Global eHealth Consultants (GeHCs), a small organization initiated in October 2008. GeHCs serves as a knowledgeable source of advice for institutions who do not want to invest in house resources to develop policy and strategy in the area of telemedicine and m-eHealth. Essentially, GeHCs provides policy and strategy support to international agencies, countries and organizations. In terms of permanent staff, the organization has approximately 2.5 full time equivalents, but we have a pool of consultants worldwide that we connect with when necessary. I am also the executive director of the International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (ISfTeH), which is comprised of 43 national professional society members, as well as associates from an additional 40+ countries. With a footprint in 80+ countries, our priority is to facilitate the international dissemination of knowledge and expertise in telemedicine and eHealth, and to provide access to experts in the field worldwide. ISfTeH is structured in a very traditional way. Not only do we hold a fixed annual event each April in Luxemburg called Med-e-Tel, but we also hold annual global conferences on telemedicine and eHealth, which moves around six continents. Two years ago, our annual event was in Nigeria, last year the event was in Japan, this year it will be in France and next year the event will take place in Brazil. MTT: How do you see telehealth fitting into the medical travel space? YK: I believe the fundamental driver of medical travel is that the quality or type of expertise that medical tourists are seeking is not available locally, which is why individuals choose to travel to different locations for accessible treatment. This is a classic characteristic of why telemedicine is necessary. Telemedicine eliminates the inconvenience of travel, at least initially, and brings the care and expertise directly to the patient. MTT: If an individual is planning to travel for care, how can telehealth streamline the process pre, during and post treatment? YK: In terms of pre-travel, telemedicine can be especially helpful. Patients can look into a number of aspects including:
- The environment he/she is traveling to
- Prevailing medical conditions that he/she needs to consider
- Public health stats at the location he/she is traveling to
Also, the use of the Internet, social media and other forms of information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled health communications, can provide a tremendous amount of information regarding any public health risks specific to the desired location. MTT: When engaging in telehealth, what would you consider ideal in terms of patient communication with a doctor or hospital? YK: If a patient is traveling abroad for treatment, communication and medical records are absolutely necessary. Medical records should be readily available and sent to providers in an electronic format, and ideally should be compatible with the record-keeping in the designated location of travel. MTT: How about the diagnostics prior to travel — does this present a realistic opportunity for transferring information? YK: Absolutely, it’s quite within reach. Actually, in Switzerland there is a company called Medgate which provides strictly phone-based telemedicine. For example, patients seeking dermatological procedures are now able to send high quality pictures through cell phones, and experts at Medgate will interpret them and make a diagnosis based on the images and voice or Internet communication with patients. Pictures that are available in an electronic format are not only more accessible for patients and providers, but also instrumental to telehealth facilities. MTT: Can you describe the communication between a treating doctor in a foreign destination and the originating doctor in the home country? YK: Communication between doctors is classic in telemedicine. A home-based clinician will contact a foreign clinician, either because the foreign provider has expertise which can be brought to the case, or because that provider has information that is not available to the treating clinician. Medical tourism fits nicely into the telehealth paradigm in the sense that the foreign physician needs the patient’s medical history and important case insight. The initial consultation between providers builds the framework of telehealth. MTT: How does follow-up treatment work? YK: When a patient returns to their home country, they will either return to another healthcare facility, or to their personal home. In either case, full documentation, in paper or preferably electronic format, is required for clear communication between the different locations. MTT: What is the realistic assessment of telehealth capabilities in various parts of the world? YK: There are a limited number of countries that have the infrastructure to provide adequate bandwidth, reliable power and the proper environment for elite telehealth activities such as videoconferencing. But if we look at telemedicine and telehealth in terms of providing health at a distance, the most important aspects are distance support and communication, which can be as simple as a phone call. In that sense, the basic elements for a telehealth communication link are available in just about every location in the world. MTT: Do you see telehealth expanding in the future? YK: Absolutely. I see telehealth expanding throughout the world, in industrialized countries as well as developing countries. Telehomecare is expanding in industrialized countries because the demographics are becoming clearer. Individuals are living longer with chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, etc. The cost of care to support these patients is astronomical, so taking care of people in their homes from a distance is a very attractive option. In low and middle income countries, healthcare drivers have more to do with the growth of market penetration and the diffusion of cell phone technology into the remotest parts of rural areas. Health is beginning to leverage the availability of this technology to provide basic care services – ranging from reaching community health workers with protocols for managing certain diseases to reaching patients through text messages. The one caveat with all of this is that healthcare is produced by many different sectors. Traditional healthcare strictly deals with curing patients, but to improve the health system as a whole, prevention, protection AND overall patient care needs to be considered.