This report summarises the key findings from the first two remote telehealth consultation trials, held in Loswaki village in Jan/Feb 2021, including detail on the health trial set-up, the sequence of activities for each, the number of patients that attended, and how the requirement for medicines to be transported to the patients was fulfilled. Patients were interviewed before and after the consultation, and their feedback is included in this report, giving clear user experience data and user feedback for the SVRG human centred approach. The results from this report feed into the Telehealth Beta-System Design Priorities.
Overall, the trials were a huge success. A large number of key learnings were taken on how to improve the service, and the medicine delivery method proved viable. Patients were extremely happy with the service, despite their clear desires for a fully equipped hospital. Once we’d run one remote health clinic in Loswaki, we had multiple other different village community members asking us to do the same at their village too, even from villages that had previously shown severe scepticism towards the service when focus groups were run there. Patients struggled to believe how comprehensively they could be treated from a remote diagnosis with medicine delivery, until having spoken to, and assured by the doctor. We think that the novelty of the concept made it hard for them to fully understand the benefits when discussed in a focus group, but the implementation stage really showed its popularity and huge potential to provide medical services to otherwise severely underserved populations.
