Who might need what I've got?

May 24, 2006 2:15 PM

Please help me start to search for volunteering opportunities for a high-tech worker in Asia.

I am at an age where I can look down the road about a decade and see retirement lurking. What am I going to do with myself? What I want to do is go and be a volunteer (long term, i.e. make a multi-year committment, not just be a two week volun-tourist) somewhere in the developing world. The complicating factor is that the skills I have are pretty specialized, and I could use some pointers figuring out where they might be useful and needed.

I am an IT person in a hospital. I run the PACS system, which juggles all the different kinds of digital images created by all the devices that image your insides--the CAT scanners, MRI machines, Ultrasounds, etc. etc.--and stores them in an online archive, and delivers them to fancy hi-res viewing stations for doctors to scratch their heads over. Here is a .pdf diagram of Stony Brook's PACS, very similar to ours. I know how to operate one of these thingies and how to fix it when it breaks and how to put one together. They tend to cost in the millions of dollars (not including the devices that create the images to begin with) but I could build you a bare-bones but functional PACS using free/open-source software for the price of one $2000 server and a couple of Best Buy-level hubs and a roll of cat6 cable. I assume there are medical outfits out there that would like to get into digital radiography (because film is extremely expensive) or distance radiography (because they serve far-flung communities without clinics) but can't because thay don't have the couple of million $ it takes to get Siemens or GE or Fuji or the other big vendors to talk to you. I assume there are overseas universities and medical training institutes that could use an instructor with lots of digital radiography experience. I could help!

But who needs this? There are some prerequisites. You have to have pretty reliable electric power. You have to have some network infrastructure already in place, and at least some devices that take digital X-rays or could be modified to do so. In short, you have to have some technology and some money--I can't build a system out of jute or copra. So that's the first and unselfish constraint: can't be totally un-developed.

The selfish constraint is that I would like to go somewhere in the Far East and experience a life and culture as different as possible from what I know. I'm good with languages and have plenty of time to become fluent in an Asian language if I knew where I was headed and could start studying that language now, several years in advance. But where should I be heading? Japan doesn't need this kind of help. South Korea has tons of PACS activity (the government pushes it there) but they're not poor either. North Korea is right out, and the other scary dictatorships like Burma. The Philippines are a possibility, but as far as I can tell from web searches there's only one hospital in the whole country that has a PACS right now. Would any of the other Philippine hospitals like to have one? I dunno, and I don't know how to find out or who to ask. Where else should I consider? Maylasia? Cambodia? Viet Nam? How should I begin researching this?

Thanks very much for your experience and ideas!

posted by jfuller to technology (6 comments total)

Doctors Without Borders?
posted by joannemerriam at 4:08 PM on May 24, 2006

I'll admit to skimming this because I don't know anything about the specifics of what you do. However, you might have some luck with Voluntary Service Overseas. They look for skilled people willing to make multiple year commitments.

You might also find UN volunteers helpful as well.
posted by carmen at 6:15 PM on May 24, 2006

Can you publish instructions on how to do this? You may end up helping more people than you can reach otherwise. Make a website where people who try it can come for help. Write your goals on your website, and the right situation may come to you. Creating the website need not be hard. You can always ask ask.metafiter for guidance, and announce on projects.metafilter. I think a wiki would be a good solution.
posted by gearspring at 9:13 PM on May 24, 2006

Thailand is surely developed enough to have the infrastructure and advanced hospitals that would house a PACS section. I never saw one while I was there (thank goodness), but, yeah, I'd put good money that they've got some. Malaysia also, in KL and Pinang/Georgetown(this isn't that big of a town, but it's a regional capital). Don't know about Malaysia's Sarawak side. Singapore for sure has this infrastructre.

Thailand has a big "medical tourism" industry. Don't know how that will play into your calculus. This is not for things like MRIs, but I guess they take some x-rays before they reshape your nose or jaw.

I think that gearspring is onto something: The question is how to balance your selfish goals (see amazing places and make new friends) and your selfless goals (help a hospital that is tempted to make a leap to digital imaging to do so, and to train somebody there to eventually take over your responsibilities after the year / 2 years / n years is up).

I think that you'd do best to contact hospitals and start making contacts and running down leads. Finding this kind of specialized work is going to take a lot of "hops." Make a call to the hospital swtichboard, get transferred to IT department, leave a message. Get called back / emailed, return the call, and then find out that, hrm, maybe you should call my friend Aliq at a larger hospital. I think that a couple of months of effort will yield a suitable situation, but of course this won't be a "pick and choose" thing, it'll just be what falls into your lap. I'm just saying that I'm not sure you will get to make a choice between 5 exotic locales each with similar needs as regards installing a PACS system.
posted by zpousman at 2:26 AM on May 25, 2006

Thanks, all. I'll certainly look into the organizations that carmen and joannemerriam mentioned.


Gearspring writes:

> Can you publish instructions on how to do this? You may end up
> helping more people than you can reach otherwise. Make a website
> where people who try it can come for help. Write your goals on
> your website, and the right situation may come to you.

That's an excellent idea, I'll do it! Actually I'm just setting out to build exactly the kind of bare-bones, low-cost system I described in my post as a backup PACS for the place where I work now, that would keep core radiology running even if we lost the hospital's network backbone. I'll document that project thoroughly as I go and throw up a website as soon as it's live and fer-sure working. I do have some site development experience, having written a site for the University of Georgia Institute of Ecology some ten years ago that was basically just a collection of chemical-analysis protocols used there and a link farm to let people navigate to them. (Looks like Hell now--at the time I didn't feel I could depend on people's browsers [i.e. Mosaic] being able to render more than 8 colors--but I note with some pride that it's still up, though I see they've moved it to a UGa server instead of the 386 (!) running Slackware that I originally built to serve out the pages.)


zpousman:

> this won't be a "pick and choose" thing, it'll just be what falls
> into your lap. I'm just saying that I'm not sure you will get to
> make a choice between 5 exotic locales each with similar needs as
> regards installing a PACS system.

Understood. Don't need but one, since there's only one of me.

Thanks again, everyone.
posted by jfuller at 7:57 AM on May 25, 2006

I am glad you like my suggestion. But why wait until it all works? Document your development and progress. Publish early and often and you get feedback quicker.
posted by gearspring at 9:08 PM on May 25, 2006