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E-HEALTH SUPPLEMENT: WORLD HEALTH CHANNEL The World Health Channel (WHC) has been developed over the last three years with a series of trials emphasizing the need for specific content relevant to health and development and the interaction of WorldSpace with other telecommunications media, including both analogue and digital telephone lines, United Nations and commercial satellite links, email and the Internet. The content has ranged from clinical problems (including maternal to child transmission of HIV, malaria and individual case presentations) to issues dealing with public health such as HIV prevention, health care policy and health care management issues. Examples of the latter include debate on access to health information in developing countries as well as the organisation and broadcast of special interactive sessions using multiple networks such as International Congresses, the World Health Organization debate between Candidates for Director General and the Special Session on HIV, malaria and TB of the Heads of State of the African Union at last year’s Summit. Participants have included health care policy makers, including ministries of health and hospital managers, village health workers, physicians, NGOs and public health specialists in Africa and Asia. A variety of satellite, fixed line and wireless networks have been used to maximise the interactive potential of the digital radio broadcasts from WorldSpace. The formal and informal assessments of these trials (see Rangarajan and Ayenew, 2002) have demonstrated that: ➜ the relevance and interest in health and development topics is high; ➜ the human touch of hearing and seeing adds interest to the material; ➜ questions can be asked easily whenever needed; ➜ the programme allowed interaction with some of the world’s leading experts in this field; ➜ compared to a video conference, there was more focus on the lecture rather than video headshots and panning back to slide material; ➜ the chat functionality added significantly to programmes; ➜ the voice quality was excellent, once telephone feedback was muted at each site; ➜ the forwarding of additional documents (‘datacasting’) adds to the relevance of the topics and maximises the potential of such interaction; and ➜ the presenters were comfortable working in this format . The modalities used to maximise these networks for medical education have included an audio World Health Channel and an asynchronous learning community (ALC). The audio channel is the initial major focus of this project and which will integrate the use of data, video and other media used in WorldSpace datacasting and also all that broadcast or made available on other networks. This will involve many different programming formats. Selected sections may be rebroadcast on local analogue radio stations. The asynchronous learning community (ALC) will take the form of a combination of text-based information and interactive multimedia courses. It will access existing resources of websites with relevant information via hotlinks to those sites as well as offering health care workers online courses where no such education had previously existed. The material will be presented in relation to several different criteria depending on the location of the health care worker and their particular level of expertise and with clear reference to the degree of evidence-based criteria for a given topic. The Channel will set up three levels of health information for easy identification of relevant information in a form that will be easily understandable: ➜ Level 1: content directed at lay persons working in health care in developing countries; this will be appropriate for patients, village workers, and parents but will be practical and skills-oriented (e.g. ‘Where there is no Doctor’ series). ➜ Level 2: content directed at health care workers who have trained as health care professionals in developing countries. This may include any type of professional and the content will be directed thus at a wide audience but will be more specific for given conditions than Level 1 material. ➜ Level 3: Specialist-oriented information. This material is designed for specialists in international health, which may include physicians or public health specialists in both developed and developing countries. It may include information from sources such as recent international conferences in international health or peerreviewed journals in the area as well as courses from academic centres of excellence. In the process of development the WHC has maximised the potential offered by satellite digital radio including: ➜ real time digital quality audio broadcasting; ➜ asynchronous audio broadcasts; ➜ ‘datacasting’ of multiple formats of media and files; ➜ use of e-learning software designed specifically for digital satellite (‘CLASS’ platform); ➜ real time and asynchronous interaction between participants using email, Internet Radio, telephone links and other networks; ➜ use of receivers in areas with limited electricity supplies and little or no telecommunications infrastructure; and ➜ use of a variety of formats including Power Point style lectures, panel discussions and debate. WorldSpace forms a key aspect of the Channel in making it accessible to health workers in developing countries without reliable access to the Internet, to telecommunications infrastructure or even to electricity. The Channel will be able to be accessed using cost effective WorldSpace specific digital radio receivers, costing less than US$100 and able to receive high quality digital audio signals in addition to datastreaming without the need for telecommunications infrastructure. Some units are able to run on kerosene or solar power and no fixed land line or mobile telephone infrastructure is necessary. Many types of data can be streamed including quality video. The use of the CLASS software system designed exclusive for WorldSpace allows real time interaction with a Power Point style presentation where the lecturer(s) may be Vol. 40 No. 4 | World Hospitals and Health Services | 37
E-HEALTH SUPPLEMENT: WORLD HEALTH CHANNEL Figure 1: coverage areas of the AfriStar, AsiaStar and (yet to be launched) AmeriStar satellites of WorldSpace. located anywhere and involve participation of the students through email or other networks in an interactive way. This uniquely replicates the classroom experience in a cost effective manner that can be used in rural and inaccessible regions where healthcare is delivered. The speaker software running in the ‘Live Presentation’ mode of the CLASS platform allows the presenter to navigate through the lecture. During the presentation, the speaker’s voice is delivered to the listener audience using an audio sub-channel, and any annotations made on the slides, along with the slide control information, is delivered over a data sub-channel to each listener PC. The control information sent from the Speaker PC to each listener PC tracks the Speaker PC’s current slide and annotation, effectively placing everyone (the speaker and all the listeners) on the same page. The CLASS solution allows a listener to locally cache an entire presentation and replay it later. There is also a provision to send any supplementary information (such as related documents, class handouts or web based materials) before, during or after the live presentation (see Rangarajan and Ayenew, 2002). Coverage The map (see figure 1) shows the coverage areas of the AfriStar, AsiaStar and (yet to be launched) AmeriStar satellites of WorldSpace. Additional coverage of WHC will be provided using analogue networks and Internet Radio to extend the reach of the World Health Channel. Emphasis of the WHC will be on coverage to rural and difficult to access countries, where information access is most limited. Content schedule and future development The following content ‘streams’ will serve as specifically timed programming through the day in conjunction with specific and related data streaming at night. This will assure that a given audience knows when to be aware of the programming that will interest them and serves also to clarify the funding and content organisation. Each stream will have a different group coordinating activities and will, along with partners, seek funding from commercial and charitable sources related to that area. Stream I: Policy into practice Topics: healthcare management, health policy, public health, epidemiology, preventive medicine, health equity, population health, environmental health. Stream II: The doctor in your home Topics: home and workplace safety, appropriate use of healthcare resources, harmful and helpful traditional health care practices where there is no doctor, P2P (patient to patient), carer information, community medicine, occupational medicine 38 | World Hospitals and Health Services | Vol. 40 No. 4
Page 1 and 2: 2004 Volume 40 Number 4 Internation
Page 3 and 4: EDITORIAL Embracing the ‘health s
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