Telemedicine in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Teleophthalmology and Eye Care in Ethiopia

摘要

The authors examine the need and adoption of teleoph-thalmology in sub-Saharan Africa. Ethiopia, like most sub-Saharan African countries, is faced with limited specialists and health care services. These services are often concentrated in the urban areas, leaving most of the rural population (about 70% of the country) without adequate and timely health care delivery. In Ethiopia, the ratio of ophthalmologists to the population is 1:1,200,000, resulting in inadequate delivery of ophthalmology-relatedhealth care services. Using both primary and secondary data collection approaches, the authors report the need for telemedicine as well as the adoption and application of teleophthalmology in Ethiopia. Further, they present Ethiopia's teleophthalmology network, integrated teleconsultation, and teleeducation services. The authors conclude by presenting this research as a starting point to investigate further teleophthalmology and other telemedicine services for Ethiopia and by extension, other developingcountries. Therefore, they bring a much-underresearched region (sub-Saharan Africa) and a much-underresearched technology (telemedicine) to the forefront of information systems (IS) research. It is the authors' hope that colleagues in the field will bemotivated to investigate this "forgotten" region of the world that is yet to reap the full potentials of information and communications technologies (ICTs).