Dutch Company Delft Imaging Systems has completed the largest African e-health and tuberculosis project in Ghana known as 51 X-ray systems.
The systems were installed this March across the country to accelerate Tuberculosis (TB) case detection in Ghana.
This installation came ahead of World Tuberculosis Day that fell last Saturday, March 24. TB is curable but kills 5000 people globally every day.
A target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is to end TB globally by the year 2030. Effective prevention, detection and treatment of TB are key to achieving this goal in the next 12 years.
The Ghana government, with the help of the Dutch government’s ORIO grant and partnership from Oldelft Benelux, local daughter company, Universal Delft and the Universal Hospitals Group Ghana and Delft Imaging Systems installed the 51 X-ray systems in hospitals, containers and screening vans across Ghana.
The mobile screening solutions are self-sustainable thanks to solar panels and can reach even the remotest locations.
Eighteen multifunctional X-ray units are permanently installed in hospitals. This way, hospitals can also use the X-rays to diagnose injuries and fractures in general. In addition, 29 X-ray systems in containers, two TB-screening vans and two Easy Portable X-ray systems have been supplied.
The X-ray systems are equipped with Computer Aided Detection for TB (CAD4TB) software and teleradiology technology.
By applying deep learning technology to thousands of healthy and diseased X-rays, CAD4TB can indicate the likelihood of tuberculosis. It’s possible to screen up to 200 images per day.
Only patients with a high CAD4TB score will be tested with the standard and more expensive GeneXpert test. This makes it a very (cost) effective way to find TB at an early stage in poor communities. All the X-ray systems are interlinked to a central e-health platform in Accra.
The teleradiology solution makes it possible to exchange X-ray images with all connected hospitals and clinics.
The combination of the unique and cost-effective e-health platform and multifunctional X-ray systems will strengthen the Ghanaian healthcare system as a whole.
SOURCE:DAILYHERITAGE