The protocol was signed today, 21 September, by Humberto Bettencourt dos Santos, chairman of the Board of CVTelecom and Jorge Tienne Cardoso, Head of Baptista de Sousa Hospital. This protocol comprises equipment offer, technical assistance and telephone connection for a year and reinforces the bet and technological contribution of CVTelecom in terms of medicine.
Developed by PT Inovação, the Medigraf tele-consultation solution is an integrated communication and collaboration tool to support remote medical consultations. This solution is based on collaborative work put together through video-telephony and sharing of clinical information, in order to enable the health professionals to cooperate to get a clinical diagnosis, irrespective of the distance. This technology will shorten distances by connecting as of today the Cardiology service of Baptista de Sousa Hospital to the Pediatric Hospital of the Coimbra Hospital Centre.
This connection will reduce the flow of Cape-Verdean patients displaced to Portugal as Cape-Verdean and Portuguese specialists will be able to analyse together and remotely the clinical status of patients and prescribe the most convenient treatment.
Baptista de Sousa Hospital is the second hospital in Cape Verde to be connected to the Pediatric Hospital of Coimbra by means of Telemedicine. 2009 saw CVTelecom equip Agostinho Neto Hospital at Cidade da Praia with the same solution, having been avoided circa 100 trips of patients just for diagnosis purposes.
There are currently two Cape-Verdean, eight Portuguese and two Angolan hospitals connected to the Pediatric Hospital of Coimbra through the Medigraf platform, amounting to more than 10,000 tele-consultations .
Up to now, PT Inovação has already installed 50 Medigraf tele-consultation platforms in Portuguese healthcare units, being used by different healthcare professionals in domains such as cardiology, dermatology, radiology and genetics, among others.
The strong commitment to Cape Verde
Portugal Telecom’s strategic partnership with CVTelecom reinforced Cape Verde’s position as a pole of technological innovation, developing a modern an extensive communications infra-structure. Its strong network investment, associated with an offer of products and services of value, enabled to reach high penetration rates. CVTelecom is a reference in terms of innovation, having pioneered the introduction of IPTV in Africa in 2006.