SES and SES Techcom Services announced that its innovative eHealth platform SATMED has been deployed to improve childbirth healthcare at the Maternité Hospital in Ahozonnoude, Benin.

Utilizing SES’s satellite Internet connectivity, the SATMED platform operates as a remote consultation and monitoring tool to provide effective communications between the maternity hospital in Ahozonnoude, the hospital in capital Cotonou and a third hospital unit in Allada. Training for medical and hospital support staff on how to use and maintain the SATMED equipment has been provided, and support to people in the field will continue.

In Benin, the eHealth system provides the only effective communication link between the three units, since the routes are often inaccessible due to flooding during the rainy season. Additional remote training is to be delivered online, enabling midwives and health workers in training to have their performance monitored and evaluated by an assigned physician, improving healthcare at a local, regional and national scale.

Carried out in conjunction with Fondation Follereau Luxembourg (FFL), the installation aims to improve mother-child health during the delivery and aftercare of childbirth, as well as to assist in its general aim of improving medical knowledge via remote consultation and monitoring facilities.

Managing Director of SES Techcom Services Gerhard Bethscheider said: “We are very pleased with the way SATMED is overcoming the barriers often faced in deployment of health services across Africa, where terrestrial infrastructures may be lacking or even non-existent. Thanks to satellite technology, we are now in a position to assist in improving both the speed and quality of healthcare services in rural and remote regions, contributing to change on a much wider scale.”

SATMED, which is led by the Luxembourg government and is the medical component of the disaster recovery platform emergency.lu, has already made significant strides in the eHealth market through its deployment at Serabu Community Hospital, Sierra Leone. There, it was instrumental in fighting diseases by fostering relations between doctors who exchanged specialist medical knowledge for the benefit of patients and public health.