The Mary Heersink Institute for Global Health (MHIGH) spearheads a global telehealth second opinion portal to provide a sustainable, flexible, and secure platform that fosters partnership and leverages the expertise of the global medical community.
This program is an extension of the UAB Cameroon Health Initiative collaboration in partnership with the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Services, the Cameroon Medical Board, and other health stakeholders in Cameroon. Cameroonian physicians will submit requests for second opinions on behalf of their patients. Asynchronous second opinions are provided by U.S.-based diaspora physicians affiliated with the Association of Cameroonian Physicians in the Americas (ACPA).
This initiative is being piloted at six Cameroonian hospitals: Mboppi Baptist Hospital Douala, Nkwen Baptist Hospital Bamenda, Etoug-Ebe Baptist Hospital Yaoundé, Buea Regional Hospital, Bamenda Regional Hospital, and Limbe Regional Hospital.
The expected response time on a second opinion request is 48-72 business hours.
Physicians at one of these pilot hospitals who would like to request a second opinion, please reach out to Audrey Shreiner, shreiner@uab.edu. Instructions for use will be shared once user access is granted.
Conditions of Use
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This second opinion system is provided at the users' own risk, and no responsibility or liability is accepted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
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UAB cannot provide any guarantee about the quality of the clinical advice provided through the system, its suitability for purpose, or the speed with which it is supplied.
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All clinical opinions are provided to the treating physician under the normal rules of inter-professional dialogue.
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This system is for second opinions, not a directive for care. The treating physician retains full responsibility for patient management.
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Any clinical advice is provided based on the best information available at the time. Consulting physicians are providing a clinical opinion based on the limited case details provided by the treating physician, without having had any direct contact with the patient.
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Users of the system agree to keep patient information confidential, in accordance with normal procedures for medical consultation.
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Clinical advice is offered with the expectation that treating physicians will not charge patients an additional fee for the second opinion consultations.
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Treating physicians are to obtain verbal consent from the patient prior to requesting a second opinion.
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Users of the system agree to keep patient information confidential, in accordance with normal procedures for medical consultation. Specifically, information may not be published in any way or transferred to any third party without the prior agreement of the Consulting physician, UAB, and the patient concerned.
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Users must ensure that UAB is acknowledged in any publications relying on the work: unless there are exceptional circumstances, UAB expects to be informed prior to material being submitted for publication. For its part, if UAB wishes to publish something based on network data (except non-identifiable data), it will seek permission from the relevant network first and consulting physician.