Social innovation improves living conditions in Amazonian communities with cell phones and telemedicine

On March 11, the workshop”Social Innovation for Health in Rural Communities in the Amazon: Partnership between Mobile Telephony and Telemedicine,” was held at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). The event was organized by the Spanish NGO Fundación EHAS and the PUCP Rural Telecommunications Group, which are involved in the NAPO Project in a strategic partnership with the Social Innovation Directorate at CAF—development bank of Latin America—, AECID (Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development) and the Community of Madrid. The meeting discussed strategies implemented by the NAPO Project in the Peruvian Amazon since 2016, providing mobile broadband connectivity and telemedicine tools to their isolated communities, with the aim of improving their access to communication and high-quality health care.

The workshop was attended by more than 60 participants from multidisciplinary entities, ranging from public institutions, academics, businesses, NGOs, international cooperation agencies and other private stakeholders engaged in telecommunications and health care innovation.

Participants learned in detail the progress made so far with the NAPO project, which has offered more than 3,000 inhabitants of 8 isolated communities in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest mobile broadband service, as well as internet connectivity and telemedicine services to 13 rural health care facilities, serving a population of more than 8,500 people. Rollout of these telecommunications tools has so far resulted in more than 800 teleconsultations, enhancing the resolution capacity of rural health care posts and improving the coordination of the public health care network.

The diversity of participating entities led to a enriching conversation about the challenges facing the provision of essential services in rural areas, and the potential of the NAPO strategy to help reduce the inequalities faced by rural communities in both Peru and other regions of Latin America. These stakeholders agreed on the need to find sustainable models that can cut investment costs, as noted by MAYU Telecomunicaciones, as they underlined the opportunity for the NAPO Project to rely on the Rural Mobile Infrastructure Operator (OIMR). In addition, ACCIONA Microenergía noted the importance of tailoring solutions to the socio-cultural context of each community, in an effort to promote local appropriation and sustainability.

The meeting also underscored the need to advance standardized regulations across different Andean countries, as noted by satellite operator Hipasat, and the opportunity that this type of project offers companies to improve their products, such as GMV, an international business group that offers technological innovation solutions and is engaged in the telemedicine area of the NAPO Project. At the institutional level, the Regional Government of Loreto explained its plans to replicate this initiative in other areas of the department. Furthermore, both CAF Social Innovation and TeleSalud at the Ministry of Health of Peru (MINSA) reiterated their interest and support to scale this initiative to other regions of Peru.