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Telemedicine is a Gender and Development (GAD) Solution
While health care is a cross-cutting issue, research and scientific literature have time and again showed disproportionality and asymmetry in access between men and women, making health care equity a persistent gender issue. And although women tend to have higher life expectation rates than men, studies show that they are however, more likely to spend their later years with a disability than their male counterparts.
Women’s health care is culturally sensitive. According the World Health Organization (WHO), health care is gendered because in many societies, including the Philippines, women are burdened with less control over decision making about their bodies. The traditional division of labor between men and women across most households further limit women’s mobility as they are largely expected to stay at home and manage domestic affairs.
Geographical barriers exacerbate cultural norms. In the Philippine countryside, these women-managed households are predominantly situated kilometers away from urban centers where most public and private services are located. Gender-sensitive conditions such as traveling and transportation difficulties often stand in the way of women regularly attending to their physical and health check-ups further limiting information about their health status.
Research says women seek to consult health care professionals more than men. Behavioral data suggest that women are more likely to seek professional health care advice than men. But when faced with access barriers, this predisposition is unrealized into actual consultations and diagnoses.
Ageing women and inter-generational transfers. A study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on gender and the elderly shows that inter-generational fund transfers, that is, from younger generations or descendants to their older parents or grandparents, have been declining across Asia, including the Philippines. In most cases, women rather than men are negatively impacted by this trend as older men are generally less financially dependent on their descendants than elderly women.
During times of crisis, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, specialized health care facilities and activities for women and girls are among those that suffer budget reductions and accessibility as health care authorities focus on the more overwhelming tasks of managing surges and other emergencies. Reproductive health care, including family planning services, are among those that declined when COVID struck the country.
GAD planning and budgeting as an entry point for closing gaps in women’s health care. Across all government agencies, including local government units (LGUs), Gender and Development (GAD) has been mainstreamed and institutionalized in the past few decades through the incorporation of the Harmonized Gender and Development Guidelines (HGDG) in agency budgeting and investment programming. The HGDG includes indicators and checklists that provide the basis for health service programs that can correct imbalances in gender access.
The GAD promise of telemedicine
As a technology that can bridge health care services to women right at their doorsteps or within their respective communities, telemedicine technology is a game changer in achieving gender equity in health as it directly addresses the cultural, geographic, and age variables limiting women’s access. Equipped with the appropriate telemedicine technology, LGUs can finally reach geographically disadvantaged areas and communities where women are more likely to suffer from health care access problems. And as a great number of local health care workers in the Philippines are also women, equipping them with telemedicine devices achieves another level of empowerment.
One Top Medical Systems Resources is trailblazing the telemedicine industry in the Philippines in partnership with SK Telemed through the IDIS2GO telehealth system. Anchored on a cloud-based system, IDIS2GO is designed to collect, transmit, and store information about the vital signs (physiological parameters) of the patient’s body including:
- blood pressure
- electrocardiographic examination (12 channels) heart rate
- blood glucose level
- urine analysis
- respiratory functions such as blood oxygen saturation and pulse rate
- body temperature
- ultrasound
- diagnostic alcohol test
- photographing and audio recording
With the Philippine government fully committed to a whole-of-nation approach to realizing indicators, including those pertaining to gender equality and health, under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs), establishing telemedicine technology as a key component of local health services is a step towards closing the gender divide in better health care.