Prospects and Challenges of Telemedicine in Zimbabwe: A Case Study of Nyatate, Nyafaru and Tombo Rural Clinics in Nyanga District

Abstract

The study was carried at three rural health clinics (Nyatate, Nyafaru & Tombo) in Nyanga District, Zimbabwe. The aim was to analyse the prospects and challenges of telemedicine in Zimbabwe by taking a special look at the telemedicine pilot projects at Nyatate, Nyafaru and Tombo in Nyanga district which is a population size of 4100. From there a sample size of 52 was obtained. The purpose was to discover the scopes and barriers or challenges and prospects of its implementation within existing health care services. The objectives were to determine the attitudes of members of the community in the use of telemedicine, to determine healthcare workers perception in the use of telemedicine in their daily duties, to determine internet and infrastructure availability at the pilot clinics and lastly to recommend ways in which telemedicine can be provided for in Zimbabwe. Findings indicate that majority of patients are willing to use telemedicine as a health delivery system. Patients indicated that their attitude towards telemedicine use was determined by a number of reasons. These include; increased access to healthcare, increased quality of care, convenience and economies of scale. The other group of participants were the healthcare workers. Healthcare workers indicated that their perception of telemedicine in their daily work was determined by a number of reasons. The reasons included the level of work load, computer literacy, incentives and opportunity to learn. It emerged from the research that there is inadequate infrastructure in rural hospitals which may render even skilled professionals non useful. This inadequacy limits or compromises diagnostic ability at rural health centre level but, through telemedicine, skilled doctors will be able to offer diagnostic solutions. Integrating current health systems with telemedicine can help in the adaptation of this new technology. This can be done by starting from the national level going down to the rural health centre level. The researcher recommends the need to carry out more awareness campaigns in order to increase the level of telemedicine awareness among the members of Nyatate, Nyafaru and Tombo communities. Healthcare workers should be trained on the use of telemedicine technology, they should also be given incentives so as to increase motivation of telemedicine use and more health care workers should be employed in order to reduce work load from existing staff.