Satellite operator SES has partnered with the technical assistance of Square Informatix (Bangladesh) Ltd to launch the first stat-of-the-art Maritimes VSATs on three floating hospital ships managed by NGO FRIENDSHIP.
The newly-deployed satellite-based e-health platform, known as SATMED, has been launched on the three Floating Hospitals Lifebuoy Friendship Hospital, Emirates Friendship Hospital and Rongdhonu Friendship Hospital, formerly known as the Rainbow Warrior II. SATMED will enable FRIENDSHIP to communicate with national and international doctors from remote areas, use telemedicine to provide medical counselling to marginalised communities and create a medical knowledge exchange platform with local doctors.
SATMED constitutes an open and flexible IT enabled cloud infrastructure offering data exchanges between professionals and medical frameworks such as electronic medical records and teleradiology systems. The project is funded by the Luxembourg Government and established in cooperation with SES Techcom Services and e-Medical Communication (eMC).
"The SATMED project is a great illustration of a true partnership between governments, the private sector and NGOs," commented Runa Khan, Founder and Executive Director of FRIENDSHIP in Bangladesh. "SATMED gives us a tool by which we are able to bring in specialised services of e-learning, special doctors, specialised back office resources, decisions of problems and ethical decisions, all this can be centralised and the same message can be given organisation wide."
"After implementing SATMED platform tools and services, the ship hospitals - via satellite connectivity - will be able to support and facilitate work in the areas of e-care, e-learning, e-surveillance, e-health management, and digital imagine," added Gerhard Bethscheider, Managing Director of SES Techcom Services. "The SATMED platform makes e-health available, accessible and easy to use, with a goal to increase efficiency in healthcare and in-field health quality for FRIENDSHIP (the medical community) especially in remote isolated areas."
"At the end of the inauguration ceremony, two European doctors consulted with patients from the remote island known as chars through teleconferencing directly from Europe," said Marc Elvinger, Chairman, FRIENDSHIP Luxembourg. "Without FRINEDSHIP's innovative healthcare model and the SATMED connectivity, such a facility would have been simply inconceivable to the poor marginalised people of this country."
Photo provided by SES
