Wireless Networking for Hospitals in Rwanda,The Telemedicine Initiative.

Introduction

Rwanda's general plan of the National Information Communication Infrastructure (NICI), aims at deploying and spreading ICT in the community.To enhance the initiative, the Government of Rwanda is laying network of optic-fibre cables across main towns in the country. With regard to the NICI plan,the Ministry of Health intends to develop a National Telemedicine project for Rwanda.The current target is to have 5 telemedicine centres by the end of 2005.

Objectives

• Reducing cost and improve productivity within the health delivery system.
• Modernising operation of health delivery system.
• Takeing telemedicine system in urban,rural hospital and community health centres.
• Supporting research in medical schools and teaching hospitals.
• Facilitating reseach to inservice medical personnel and providing them with medical information.

Pilot Project

The pilot hospital is Central Hospita of Kigali (CHK).This is one of the referral hospital and a teaching hospital. It has approximately 22 blocks spread over an area of about 3km sq. Currently only the administrative block is networked using ISDN technology.The pilot project is to extend the network to other blocks using wireless networking technology.The choice of wireless is because among other reasons, it is easier to deploy while targeting a relatively high bandwidth. The cost of deployement is also cheaper compared to other available technologies.

Possible Funding Sources

• Government of Rwanda.
• UNDP.
• Global Fund.