2017 International Rural and Elderly Health Informatics Conference (IREHI)

High-income countries are facing exploding medical costs primarily due to growing population of elderly people. Elderly are the fastest growing demographic group in developed countries. The UN forecasts that by 2050, elderly (60 years et and older) would constitute up over 20% of the world population. In developed countries, the nursing home provides adequate care services to elderly; nevertheless, elderly people prefer staying at home in their familiar and usual social environment and take care of their health by themselves as long as they are able to. Home care applications are therefore increasingly in demand.

Rural areas, particularly in developing countries, are suffering from poor access to health care services. Among the reasons are poor health care infrastructures, inappropriate public health structure, lack of health insurance, brain drain and lack of medical expert specialists. Telehealthcare and remote care delivery are a continuing trend today in developing countries public health care systems to overcome care provision issues and increase access to care service.

Although of significant progress gained in providing quality healthcare in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, improvements are still needed for some population groups. In fact, several years after successfully launch the policies for access to primary health care (Alma Ata vision 1978, Harare 1987, Ouagadougou 2008), significant challenges remains in accessing to quality healthcare in rural areas in most of the sub-Saharan African countries.

On the other hand, several studies have shown that approaches integrating solutions proposed by new information and communication technologies (ICT) could significantly contribute to the improvement of health education, diagnosis of diseases, effectiveness of treatment and monitoring of the elderly, both in urban and rural areas where specialized services are still limited or sometimes non-existent.

In spite of several challenges encountered in expanding the telehealth and distance care in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the benefits of these approaches are undeniable and could contribute to the strengthening and better functioning of most health systems of these countries. This would be an asset in achieving the goals of universal health coverage (UHC) and sustainable development to which all these countries have agreed and subscribed.

In recent years, numerous projects for the development and integration of new information and communication technologies (ICT) into health systems have been deployed, both in industrialized and developing countries. However, most of these initiatives have often been organized in parallel and separate manner. Moreover, the opportunities for presenting evidence-based experiences, especially from African’s teams, and sharing solutions from various actors involved in the implementation of these approaches are not frequent and well-formalized.