Transforming Africa’s Health Crisis With Telemedicine

Telemedicine is renowned for bringing care to the underserved – but the underserved tend to live in areas with inherent logistical challenges. An effective virtual health deployment needs more than good intentions, clinical expertise, and sophisticated technology; also, leaders need to create an intelligent telemedicine infrastructure. This is the story of how virtual care transformed parts of rural Africa, both through a small-scale grassroots effort in a Ghana village and a large United Nations-funded deployment across Zimbabwe. It’s an inspiring story of the lives changed there, but also a practical account of the planning, collaboration, and foresight needed to implement a clinically effective, on-budget telemedicine program across disadvantaged regions and multiple organizations.