MSF Telemedicine
Origin language: English
The Telemedicine program provides tele-expertise services and secure telehealth solutions designed to support the needs of medical staff across MSF, while building a community of knowledge-sharing and clinical collaboration.
Tele-expertise services include:
- Case Management: A service for clinicians in MSF projects, providing access to a global network of specialists offering case-by-case clinical and medical advice via a secure platform.
- Video Case Discussion: Regular video conference calls with a dedicated specialist to discuss cases and strengthen clinical practice in the project.
Telehealth solutions include:
- Secure Messaging: An instant message application specifically designed for healthcare that facilitates the exchange of expertise, patient information, and files among MSF medical staff.
- Teleconsultation (currently in piloting phase): A secure and user-friendly video-call platform that enables patients to connect with MSF healthcare professionals, reducing travel barriers.
Since its inception in 2010, the Telemedicine program has helped healthcare professionals overcome geographic barriers for equitable, accessible and quality patient care. Designed for all MSF projects, our services connect a global network of clinical specialists through secure communication channels.
Key Challenges
- Developing, integrating, and sustaining the Telemedicine Program within MSF requires significant time and continuous investment.
- Technical barriers: Limited internet connectivity and frequent power outages in remote settings hinder service usage. In addition, low digital literacy levels and limited access to technological devices among project users make it difficult to fully utilise telemedicine's tools and services.
- Operational constraints: High turnover among field staff complicates training efforts and undermines consistent use. Furthermore, insufficient democratisation among locally hired staff across MSF projects limits widespread and equitable use.
- Workflow adaptation: Telemedicine introduces changes to traditional clinical workflows, requiring time, training, and support to ensure effective adoption by healthcare providers.
- Adoption and scale: Despite several years of implementation, telemedicine remains underutilised—handling approximately 5,000 cases annually compared to MSF’s 16 million consultations in 2024. Scaling up usage remains a key challenge.
- Service limitations: Requests from projects for urgent care are difficult to accommodate given the additional steps in telemedicine workflows and current program capacity constraints.
- Human resource challenges: Recruiting specialists in high-demand fields continues to be difficult, limiting the program’s ability to respond to certain clinical needs.
- Appropriate Technology Choice: Use of a store-and-forward system (asynchronous communication) to overcome connectivity issues, reduce costs, and offer flexibility for busy clinicians.
- Continuous Quality Improvement: Regular maintenance and updates to the platform through a quality assurance (QA) program. And the quality of care of the program through the review of specialists' advice.
- Ongoing evaluation and publication of results (14 peer-reviewed studies) to build evidence and credibility.
- Stable Coordination and Trust Building: A consistent medical coordination team improved follow-up and strengthened user confidence and collaboration between referrers and specialists since 2013.
- Leveraging Mobile Technology: Increasing use of mobile phones through secure tools to improve communication among coordinators and specialists.
- Appropriate resources have been in place since 2016, along with a program team and regional implementers for continuous engagement with our users, project teams.
