Fellow Presentations: Day 4 (Renee Chin)

Renee Chin has a background that combines ethnography and community development. With diverse research interests and experience in technology, health, learning, and organizational behavior, she's uniquely qualified to handle the challenges of working with both the medical community and the patient community to determine how telemedicine (and other medical technologies) will mesh with current conditions, and how it needs to adapt to fit local needs.

Renee will be working with Jack Higgins on fielding a telemedicine system in India and creating the "localization toolkit and process" (to borrow a term from international software development) to allow the successful deployment of the telemedicine technology in other developing communities throughout the world.


Her listing of some of the different aspects of a "health ecology" give a sense for how many different touchpoints there are:

1. Hospitals, Clinics, Health Care Providers
   
2. Religion
   
3. Nutrition
   
4. Health habits and practices
   
5. Techonology
   
6. Social networks
   

Renee also outlined the methods and requirements of a successful implementation:

1. Include community memebers in the planning and goal setting
   
2. Understand the organizational and work practices
   
3. Focus on the clinician
   
4. Provide hands-on training
   

She'll be conducting interviews using the "Rapid Assessment Process (RAP)" protocol of interviews, observations, and participation during December 2004 in Kuppam, India. The ultimate product of her work will be (in addition to a successful deployment in India) a field guide for customizing telemedicine, including topics such as:

• Uncovering the local health ecology
  
• Appropriate research methods
  
• Physician Recruitment
  
• Program Development
  
• Limitations