Sydney kids’ hospitals, Huawei team for e-health trial

The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN) and Huawei have announced the results of an e-health trial involving using tablets to provide paediatric healthcare training to doctors in remote Asia-Pacific locations.

SCHN unveiled results from the pilot trial during a recent event at NSW Parliament House.

The trial involved issuing Huawei tablets to doctors and paediatric nurses in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia, as well as Kenya and Zimbabwe.

The pilot program will be extended to Fiji soon, with 20 doctors and 10 final-year University of Fiji medical students chosen to receive a tablet.

The tablets are being used to help train the healthcare practitioners under the International Postgraduate Paediatric Certificate (IPPC) program. They are being provided pre-loaded with up-to-date medical training materials including course notes and videos of lectures.

Doctors and nurses involved in the trial reported that the ability to access best practice information without having to rely on the internet or DVD players improved their knowledge, confidence and skills in treating children, the results show.

NASDAQ OMX and IT solutions provider XCentral assisted in the trial by working to compress video files and load them onto the tablets.

At the event announcing the results, Huawei made a $50,000 donation to the IPPC initiative. The Chinese vendor has invested $100,000 in the program since 2010.

The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network manages The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney Children’s Hospital, NETS, PSN and Children’s Court Clinic.