By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
July 20, 2010

CLARK, PAMPANGA – Because of a pre-screening application developed by local telco Smart Communications, medical amputees in remote areas of the country now have a better chance of getting their own prostheses, and doctors will have to shoulder less costs and time spent on medical missions.

Called ASCENT or “Amputee Screening via Cellphone Networking,” the homegrown application, developed in cooperation with the Ateneo Java Wireless Competency Center, will enable health workers to pre-screen candidates for prosthesis even before doctors arrive to personally fit their artificial limbs.

Before the mobile application, Dr. Josephine Bundoc, head of the prosthetic and narcotics service of the UP – Philippine General Hospital, said that health workers would use pen and paper to screen the candidates for prosthetics. They would then measure the amputation, make a cast out of it, and bring the cast to Manila where the prosthesis will be made.

“The problem is we had no visual idea of what kind of amputees there are,” Dr. Bundoc stressed. Doctors needed to know the condition of the amputees’ legs before fitting the artificial limbs, to check if it is already fit for using prosthesis. If the leg has some irregularities, Dr. Bundoc said they recommend the use of wheel chairs instead.

This would often lead to doctors wasting their time going around the country only to declare some candidates unfit for using prosthesis. “And these patients come from faraway places, so it’s disheartening to see them go back to their homes without their prosthesis,” Dr. Bundoc shared.

With the java application installed on health workers’ mobile phones, they can immediately give feedback to the initiative’s central office in Manila, where Bundoc pre-screens amputees based on the data collected in the field.

Estella Grace Viguilla, faculty member of Univeristy of the East – Ramon Magsaysay Medical Center and one of the first to be trained on how to use the program, demonstrated how to use the application during its pilot test here: “Basically, we enter pertinent background information such as the name, the age, and the place of residence of the patient,” she explained. “We also take note of their ambulation (ability to walk), their previous illnesses, and then we take a photo of the amputee’s leg.”

The process takes only about five to ten minutes, after which the data will be sent to a central server that can be accessed by Dr. Bundoc to check the qualifications of the applicants. “A second phase of the Web application will enable me to send a text message to the people on the field, so I can give further instructions,” she pointed out.

With the system in place, Dr. Bundoc said the center will also be able to gain insight about the number of amputees in the Philippines. The physician pegged the number to around 150,000 currently, but also shared that a World Health Organization study estimates that at least 10% of the population, or nine million individuals, are disabled, 450,000 of which would need prosthetic devices.

The medical mission here, along with the pilot testing of the application, is just one of the many initiatives carried out by Dr. Bundoc and her team, in cooperation with Physicians for Peace’s Walking Free program, a global program that provides low-cost prosthetic limbs to medical amputees.

A similar medical mission was carried out early in July at Tondo Church, also using the ASCENT application. Smart has also launched a telehealth initiative in Tarlac, which provides an open source electronic health records system to municipal health offices in the province, with the data being transmitted via the telco’s 3G network.

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