Pragmatic Teleconsultation Network Model to Address the Bandwidth Deficiency Inhibiting Real-Time Telemedicine Implementation in the Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The recent Ebola outbreak in the Western Sub-Saharan Africa shows a clear case of the reliant of developing countries on foreign medicinal experts to combat unprepared diseases outbreak. This has raised much worry about the confinement of medical experts in developing nations. The seriousness of the outbreak infectiousness, frightened the western world to release their specialists readily to help in numbers; thus, the protracted mitigation quick-fix which costed the lives of numerous. Distant video auditing telemedicine initiatives over telecommunication networks would have been helpful to assessing the Ebola alleviation other than the stringent wellbeing Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) which was not that powerful. Despite the usefulness of telemedicine in the Sub-Saharan Africa, evidence to show the effectiveness of its real-time implementation is highly limited. Hence, this research focused on investigating the factors repressing its implementation in this region. Emerging from the research was the limitation of published studies to tackle the bandwidth limitation which is the key element not making the real-time dominance telemedicine practical in the Sub-Saharan Africa. To add knowledge to solving the bandwidth limitation, the project leveraged on Quality of Service technologies and Video calling techniques over IP network to present a solution, by developing a pragmatic network prototype supporting telemedicine in real-time. The designed, developed and evaluated network prototype has ascertained that, in the Sub-Saharan Africa using a case in Ghana with a bandwidth of 512kbps real-time telemedicine is feasible in High Definition video Quality.