Davao health workers use Smart app to screen amputees

Monday, May 30, 2011

ASCENT (Amputee Screening via Cellphone NeTworking) is gaining traction with more health workers now using the mobile phone application to screen amputees for prosthetic fitting.

Some 21 health workers from Barangay Soong in Digos City, Davao del Sur found themselves using Ascent just a day after they were trained on its use during a medical mission conducted by the Physicians for Peace (PfP)-Philippines.

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Ascent is a contribution of Smart Communications Inc. (Smart) to the Walking Free Program of the PfP-Philippines and partner University of the Philippines - Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH).

Since 2005, the program has been serving indigent amputees nationwide through screening and prosthesis service missions, and by making prosthesis more affordable to the beneficiaries.

In providing Ascent, Smart hopes to highlight the breakthrough benefits of mobile phone technology to health care, particularly in remote, underserved communities where there are few doctors and specialists and patients have to travel far and spend for the trip.

The application, developed by the Ateneo Java Wireless Competency Center for Smart, enables trained health workers to key in patient information on a cell phone and send the data to a centralized Web-based database via multimedia message, along with photos taken of the amputated part with the cell phone camera.

This way, doctors can evaluate cases and give advice on the use of prosthesis for amputees even before seeing the patients.

Of the 48 patients who were screened during the mission, 36 were declared feasible for walking aids like crutches or walkers or prosthesis (fake limbs), which are expected to be delivered in August.

The remaining 12 needed further preparations or measures like stump shaping or toning and even, surgery and confinement.

Since 2010, Smart has been working with the PfP-Philippines in training physical therapists and barangay health workers on the use of Ascent during medical missions conducted in Tondo, Pampanga, Romblon, Marikina and recently, in Digos City.