HEALTH

Mobile Clinics and Remote Access will Bring Medical Attention in Real Time

Kallo has deployed its remote health-care delivery system on the IBM cloud to bring advanced real-time medical services to rural areas of the world.

Kallo's mobile health-care systems will be used to build and extend primary care infrastructure in countries including Guinea and Ghana, making health care accessible to everyone. The company's mission is to deliver public health services, manage communicable and infectious diseases such as Ebola, balance health care delivery inequities, and address rural disease and health threats. On-demand telehealth services will be delivered from the company's global command centre in Markham, Ontario and regional command centres in countries of operation.

IBM provides Kallo with technology consulting and services as well as a cloud infrastructure hosted at the recently opened SoftLayer cloud centre in Toronto. The Toronto location is part of IBM's expanding global network of more than 40 centres serving a growing roster of clients looking to move to hybrid cloud computing environments that encompass open integration, data control and unique industry expertise.

"The health-care industry is in a time of accelerating change that needs continual innovation," said John Cecil, Kallo's Chairman and CEO. "IBM's cloud technology enables us to 'reach the unreached' to scale and securely deliver North American standards of health care to some of the world's most remote or underserved populations."

Kallo services include MobileCare, RuralCare, DialysisCare, hospital information systems, tele-health systems, pharmacy information, disaster management, air and surface patient transportation systems and clinical training.

The units work in collaboration with each other, with the mobile and rural clinics providing primary care. Secondary/local specialized care is provided by the regional command centres while the global command centre provides specialized consultative care. With the volume of cases per country and the privacy and confidentiality standards in cross border tele-health practice, plans include dedicated global command centres for each country.

The IBM SoftLayer cloud solution provides increased visibility into the status and dispensation of sensitive medical data. Increasingly, clinicians everywhere are leveraging cloud computing technology – often from mobile devices – as a means to quickly access and share data and knowledge.

"Kallo is a perfect example of how young companies can take their business ideas forward on a scalable, flexible, global cloud infrastructure," said Nevil Knupp, Vice President for IBM Cloud. "Using the cloud to quickly build and bring solutions like Kallo's to market, provides a new level of agility to the way they develop. By delivering more immediate results, they can in turn help alleviate some of the most pressing health issues today."

By deploying its IT environment on the IBM Cloud, Kallo will be able to concentrate on the delivery of health care while IBM manages its IT infrastructure, enabling it to seamlessly protect data and scale with confidence. The reach of SoftLayer's cloud platform is also important for Kallo as the company plans to expand its services globally in developing countries.